Nearly a quarter of millennials and Gen Zers — essentially, all adults born during or after the early 1980s — have had a difficult time making housing payments as a result of medical debt, according to a HealthCare.com poll published earlier this month.
Twenty-three percent of millennials (broadly defined as those born between the early 1980s and the mid 1990s) said that they’ve had to skip rent or mortgage payments because of medical debts, along with 25 percent of Gen Zers (those born from the mid 1990s through the early 2010s).
Medical debts aren’t just a problem for people who are uninsured, either — 45 percent of millennials said that their health insurance didn’t fully cover services they received, resulting in debt. More than two thirds of Gen Zers (68%) said that they also have significant medical bills as a result being underinsured.
According to the survey, medical debt makes it difficult for younger Americans use their credit. A survey of Gen Zers revealed that 37 percent said medical debt negatively affected credit scores. More than half of millennials (52%) also stated that this was true.
Jeff Smedsrud is the co-founder and CEO of HealthCare.com. He stated that people with medical debts should be careful about how they are able to get their benefits explained.
“Folks should understand their Explanation of Benefits and get everyone – bill collectors, insurance firms, and your doctor – on the same page,” Smedsrud said in an email to Truthout. “Double-check your statement for accuracy and remember you may be able to negotiate a discount.”
Nurses’ unions across the country have pointed out that the U.S.’s for-profit health care system The root cause of the crisisThis has caused severe suffering for both patients and health care workers, especially during the pandemic.
“Nurses will tell you we are failing because we have let the interests of corporations and our hospital employers dictate our country’s response to this virus. Their goal is profit, not saving lives,” said National Nurses United President Zenei Triunfo-CortezThis year, earlier.
The results of the HealthCare.com survey mirror those of a December survey that highlighted how the medical-debt crisis is actually getting worse. Gallup and West Health poll, around 30 percent of Americans said that they have skipped getting health care when it was needed because they couldn’t afford the costs — a figure that is up from 18 percent when the same question was asked in February 2021.
