Many socio-economic classes live in the United States of America. But when we talk about a burden like medical debt, this hits most of the middle-class Americans. A new study has found this shocking report. Today we will be seeing some survey results that show how this debt is affecting middle-class people’s lives.
Also, a survey conducted by a think tank organization using census data showed how medical debts affect each family having different income levels, financially. People who earn an income rate below 200% of the Federal Poverty Line (FPL) are considered low-income generators, while people between 200 and 400% are middle-class and those who earn more than 400% are higher-income generators.
According to the data, middle-class people were the ones who faced the most medical debts. Talking about the average amount of their income, middle-class people will earn $50,000 to $100,000 for a 3-membered family in 2023.
Approximately 23.5 percent of middle-class families, or about 17 million households, reported having trouble covering all of their medical bills in 2020. In comparison to families with lower incomes, this figure was significantly higher by 1.5 percentage points; it also outperformed households with higher incomes by 9 points.
Middle-class households had a higher risk of being burdened by medical debt compared to lower-income households while having superior insurance coverage rates. This is commonly ascribed to the fact that lower-income households routinely neglect medical care completely because of budgetary restrictions. Furthermore, these families frequently receive additional assistance based on their income levels when they do need medical treatment.
Families with intermediate incomes have a harder time paying for high deductibles and other out-of-pocket medical costs than families with higher incomes, which leads to the buildup of medical debt.
There were also some racial differences in medical debt among middle-class persons. Approximately 38 percent of middle-class people of Black ethnicity and 25.2 percent of those of Hispanic ethnicity reported having medical debt. Comparatively, comparable problems were experienced by 20.4 percent of White middle-class people and 16.6 percent of their Asian counterparts.
Furthermore, the proportion of Black middle-class people with medical debt was 16 percentage points higher than that of Black high-income people and 8.5 percentage points higher than that of Black low-income people.
Regardless of their educational degrees, middle-class families frequently have medical debt. This comprised around 27% of people who dropped out of high school, 26% of people who graduated from high school, 25.5% of people who had some college experience, and 16.5 % of people who had a bachelor’s degree.
Likewise, middle-class people had the greatest rates of medical debt across all age groups, except those 65 and older. On the other hand, among those with lower incomes, seniors had the greatest rates of medical debt. Additionally, due in large part to their Medicare coverage, this group showed generally lower rates of debt.
Families in the middle class with children had slightly higher rates of medical debt (287.7%). However, even individuals without children (22.6%) had greater rates of debt than their counterparts with lower and higher incomes.
Whether they had health insurance (22.5%) or didn’t have it (31%) at all, middle-class people had a high rate of medical debt.
The problem of medical debt that Americans confront may be greatly reduced by putting policies in place that provide easily accessible and affordable healthcare coverage. This entails making sure that people and families can easily get medical care without having to pay high prices, which would eventually relieve the stress of accruing medical debt.
Significant assistance has been given to people struggling with medical debt, as well as healthcare accessibility, thanks to a clever strategy used by well-known credit reporting agencies. These significant credit reporting agencies have taken deliberate action to lessen the effects of medical debt. They specifically took measures to remove information about unpaid medical expenses totaling less than $500 from people’s credit reports.
These credit reporting organizations are recognizing the special difficulties presented by medical spending by eliminating such very minor medical debt obligations from credit reports. This strategy acknowledges the complex nature of medical debt, which frequently arises suddenly due to medical problems, and offers immediate assistance to people with more manageable levels of medical debt.