The Left has long insisted that medical debt is a national crisis and that the federal government needs to do something about it. They appear to have new ammunition in the form of an analysis published this month by the Peterson Center on Healthcare and KFF.
Nearly one in 12 adults — 20.4 million people — had medical debt in 2021, according to the brief. But a closer look at the numbers shows that these figures rely on some questionable assumptions.
The Peterson-KFF study counts any adult with “over $250 in unpaid medical bills as of December 2021” as having “medical debt.”
That’s a pretty loose definition of debt. It may well include people who had unpaid medical bills in December that they had plans to pay the next month.
Moreover, the headline figure — 20.4 million debtors — covers a wide range of people with unpaid medical bills. Six million of them owe $1,000 or less. Just under half owe no more than $2,000.
At the top end, fewer than 3 million people owe more than $10,000.
Those figures are fractions of the median household income in this country — more than $74,500 as of 2022. Median wealth for a household led by a high school graduate was more than $55,000 as of 2021, according to the U.S. Census.
Household spending data would seem to indicate that most Americans can find the money to pay for their healthcare if they would like to. A whopping 99% of U.S. households subscribe to at least one streaming service. The average American pays $46 a month — $552 a year — for 2.9 streaming subscriptions.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average “consumer unit” — a household, roughly speaking — spent more than $3,600 eating out in 2022. It spent more than $900 on “pets, toys, hobbies, and playground equipment.”
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It’s impossible to know how people with medical debt spend their money each month. But if taxpayers or patients who pay their medical bills are going to be asked to cover those debts, as many liberals advocate, perhaps they have a right to know.
No one likes paying medical bills. But few goods or services in our market economy are more important than those that ensure our health. The Left should be looking to make those goods and services more affordable rather than trying to make other people pay for them.
Sally C. Pipes is president, CEO, and Thomas W. Smith fellow in healthcare policy at the Pacific Research Institute. Her latest book is False Premise, False Promise: The Disastrous Reality of Medicare for All (Encounter 2020). Follow her on X @sallypipes.