New research reveals percentage of Americans with past-due medical bills remains unchanged from 2015

In “Bitter Pill: A Demographic Analysis of Unpaid Medical Bills,” the Employee Benefit Research Institute finds that despite increases in cost sharing, past-due medical debt for American adults remained the same since 2015.

Americans with past-due medical bills continue to face cascading effects on their health and personal finances, according to a press release. The study examines the relationship between past-due medical bills and demographics. Focused on working-age adults because they experienced an increase in cost sharing in their health benefits, data was used from the FINRA Foundation’s 2021 National Financial Capability Study for the research analysis.

Although Americans with past-due medical bills remained in the low 20 percent range since 2015, the percentage decreased from 26 percent in 2012. According to the study, Americans are less likely to have past-due medical bills than other sources of debt, and women are slightly more likely than men to have past-due medical bills. Black Americans are more likely than other races/ethnicity groups to have past-due medical bills also. The percentage of individuals with past-due medical bills is reduced in states with health insurance Medicaid expansion.

“Despite deductibles trending upward alongside coinsurance rates and copays for nearly two decades, we found the share of adults with past-due medical bills has remained stable over the past six years and has decreased slightly over the past decade,” Health Benefits Research, EBRI Director Paul Fronstin said in a press release. “The data presented in this paper are timely given the recent announcement that the three major credit bureaus are overhauling how medical debt is reflected on credit reports.”

Since 2009, the National Financial Capability Study has been conducted every three years by the FINRA Investor Education Foundation to benchmark key indicators of financial capability and evaluate how these indicators vary with demographic, behavioral, attitudinal and financial literacy characteristics. The study was conducted from June 2021 to October 2021 of more than 27,100 American adults.