A new analysis of government data estimates that nearly 1 in 10 American adults — or approximately 23 million people — owe medical debt, Benefits Pro reported. What’s more, nearly half of those people (11 million) owe more than $2,000, and three million people owe more than $10,000. The Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) performed the analysis, which was based on data from the 2020 Survey of Income and Program Participation, a nationally representative survey that asks every adult in a household whether they owed money for medical bills in 2019 and how much they owe. It looked at people with medical debt of more than $250. KFF’s analysis suggests that Americans’ collective medical debt totaled more than $195 billion in 2019, with a small share of adults accounting for a huge share of the total. Researchers noted that estimate is significantly higher than other commonly cited estimates, which generally rely on data from credit reports that may not capture medical debts charged to credit cards or is included in other debts rather than being directly owed to a provider.
