{"id":1325,"date":"2024-10-17T13:04:03","date_gmt":"2024-10-17T13:04:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/?p=1325"},"modified":"2024-10-17T13:04:03","modified_gmt":"2024-10-17T13:04:03","slug":"as-hospitals-get-bigger-medical-debt-is-harder-for-patients-to-shake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/?p=1325","title":{"rendered":"As Hospitals Get Bigger, Medical Debt Is Harder for Patients To Shake"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you get sick in America, there\u2019s a good chance you\u2019ll end up in debt. Four in 10 U.S. adults have some form of health-care debt,\u00a0KFF has found<\/a>.<\/p>\n

One surprising risk:<\/strong>\u00a0living in a community where hospitals have consolidated \u2014 an increasingly common development as health systems merge or large systems gobble up smaller hospitals.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s according to a\u00a0new report<\/a>\u00a0shared exclusively with KFF Health News by the\u00a0Urban Institute<\/strong>, a nonprofit that has been tracking medical debt across the United States for years and worked with KFF Health News on our\u00a0Diagnosis: Debt project<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s already well-documented that hospitals\u00a0raise prices<\/a>\u00a0when they gain market power, which can happen when systems get bigger or competitors close.<\/p>\n

So researchers at Urban wondered if market concentration could also leave more patients in debt.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith fewer alternatives and higher prices, patients may have limited options to seek more affordable care,\u201d the report\u2019s authors hypothesized. \u201cThey might delay seeking treatment, potentially leading to worse outcomes and even higher medical debt in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n

Making such a direct link is tricky, in part because many factors influence how much medical debt there is in a community.<\/p>\n

Urban researchers have already established, for example, that medical debt is higher in counties with larger shares of uninsured residents and\u00a0higher levels of chronic illnesses<\/a>\u00a0such as cancer or diabetes.<\/p>\n

To explore the impact of consolidation, researchers first looked at\u00a0hospital concentration<\/a>\u00a0in every U.S. county.<\/p>\n

They then looked at credit bureau data to see the share of county residents with an unpaid medical bill on a credit report, which is one measure of medical debt in a community.<\/p>\n

Nationally, the share of people with a medical bill on a credit report\u00a0has been declining<\/a>. But the researchers noticed that the declines were less pronounced in counties where hospitals had become more consolidated, even after accounting for other factors.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile medical debt on credit reports declined across most U.S. counties between 2012 and 2022, increases in hospital market concentration prevented such improvements in many areas of the country,\u201d they wrote.<\/p>\n

Perhaps not surprisingly, the report drew criticism from the\u00a0American Hospital Association<\/strong>\u00a0(AHA), the industry\u2019s largest trade group.\u00a0Molly Smith<\/strong>, group vice president for public policy at the AHA, called it a \u201cthin analysis\u201d that didn\u2019t account for more important factors driving medical debt such as the rise of high-deductible health plans.<\/p>\n

\u201cUntil policymakers account for the real drivers in medical debt,\u201d she said, \u201cour country won\u2019t be able to develop public policies that address this significant problem.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Urban Institute\u2019s\u00a0Breno Braga<\/strong>, one of the report\u2019s authors, acknowledged that factors such as chronic illness remain stronger predictors of medical debt than market consolidation. But, he said, the new research should give policymakers another reason to scrutinize the growing market power of health systems across the country.<\/p>\n

\u201cLimiting hospital consolidation could be beneficial for consumers in limiting medical debt,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

This article is not available for syndication due to republishing restrictions. If you have questions about the availability of this or other content for republication, please contact NewsWeb@kff.org<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

KFF Health News<\/a> is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF\u2014an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF<\/a>.<\/p>\n

USE OUR CONTENT<\/h3>\n

This story can be republished for free (details<\/a>).<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you get sick in America, there\u2019s a good chance you\u2019ll end up in debt. Four in 10 U.S. adults have some form of health-care debt,\u00a0KFF has found. One surprising risk:\u00a0living in a community where hospitals have consolidated \u2014 an increasingly common development as health systems merge or large systems gobble up smaller hospitals. That\u2019s…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":1326,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1325","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1325"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1325"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1325\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1326"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}