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One Chicago woman gave birth to twins 10 weeks prematurely, and the children needed extensive care. The medical bills topped out at around $80,000. Desperate, the parents loaded up credit cards, borrowed from relatives, and delayed repaying student loans.
Edy Adams had just graduated from college when she was sexually assaulted in 2013. After getting examined at an ER, she received calls from debt collectors for years over a $131 bill. 鈥淚 was being haunted by this zombie bill.鈥
Sherrie Foy had surgeries and medical complications that produced about $850,000 in bills. The Foys ended up declaring bankruptcy. 鈥淭hey took everything we had.鈥
Joe Pitzo was diagnosed with brain cancer in 2018. After surgery, the bills topped $350,000. 鈥淭his just took a major toll on my credit,鈥 Joe said. 鈥淚t went down to next to nothing.鈥
Even though one Colorado woman had health insurance, she was swamped with $250,000 in medical debt from surgeries for a twisted intestine. 鈥淚t was five years of hell,鈥 said her husband.
A small infection related to diabetes on one New York man鈥檚 foot set off a cascade of medical emergencies and financial struggles that his family is still struggling to cope with.
One seriously ill Arizona man was denied care because of past-due bills. His only choice was to go to the ER, where he was stuck with thousands of dollars of additional bills he couldn鈥檛 pay.
Today, debt from medical and dental bills touches nearly every corner of American society.
People talk about the sacrifices they made when health care forced them into debt.
The U.S. health system now produces debt on a mass scale, a new investigation shows. Patients face gut-wrenching sacrifices.
Noble Health swept into two small Missouri towns promising to save their hospitals. Instead, workers and vendors say it stopped paying bills and government inspectors found it put patients at risk. Within two years 鈥 after taking millions in federal covid relief and big administrative fees 鈥 it locked the doors.
Under the Affordable Care Act, insurers cannot charge consumers for various preventive services that have been recommended by experts. But if those screenings indicate more testing is needed to determine whether something is wrong, patients may be on the hook for hundreds or even thousands of dollars for diagnostic services.
The U.S. House passed a package of bills seeking to keep some guns out of the hands of children and teenagers, but its fate in the Senate remains a big question mark. Meanwhile, the Federal Trade Commission takes on drug and hospital prices. Alice Miranda Ollstein of Politico, Anna Edney of Bloomberg News, and Joanne Kenen of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Politico join KHN鈥檚 Julie Rovner to discuss these issues and more. Also this week, Rovner interviews Cori Uccello of the American Academy of Actuaries about the most recent report from Medicare鈥檚 trustees board.
In July, credit reporting bureaus will start taking paid medical debt off people's credit reports. Here's what you need to know.
Despite a consensus that patients should be able to get mental health care from primary care doctors, insurance policies and financial incentives may not support that.
Gov. Gavin Newsom proposed spending $100 million to make insulin affordable to millions of people with diabetes under a new state generic drug label, CalRx. But state officials haven鈥檛 said how much the insulin will cost patients or how the state will deal with distribution and other challenges.
Finding formula for children with allergies and other dietary restrictions was challenging even before the current shortage for families who rely on the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) food assistance program.
For many women, abortion access has also meant better economic opportunities. But that could change in states that plan to ban most abortion access if the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade. And those constraints could have a big impact on Black women. In Tennessee, Black women have abortions at more than four times the rate of white women.
Stemming gun violence is back on the legislative agenda following three mass shootings in less than a month, but it鈥檚 hard to predict success when so many previous efforts have failed. Meanwhile, lawmakers must soon decide if they will extend current premium subsidies for those buying health insurance under the Affordable Care Act, and the Biden administration acts, belatedly, on Medicare premiums. Margot Sanger-Katz of the New York Times, Sandhya Raman of CQ Roll Call, and Rachel Cohrs of Stat News join KHN鈥檚 Julie Rovner to discuss these issues and more. Also this week, Rovner interviews KHN鈥檚 Michelle Andrews, who reported and wrote the latest KHN-NPR 鈥淏ill of the Month鈥 episode about a too-common problem: denial of no-cost preventive care for a colonoscopy under the Affordable Care Act.
Colorado lawmakers approved a measure that will make it easier for people to fix their power wheelchairs when they wear out or break down, but arcane regulations and manufacturers create high hurdles for nationwide reform.
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