Americans have amassed billions of dollars in medical debt as a consequence of inadequate insurance coverage. There is an estimated $88 billion of medical debt on consumer credit records, accounting for 58 percent of all debt-collection entries on credit reports — by far the largest single source of debt in collections.³ This estimate does not include debt people owe directly to providers.

In our survey, 30 percent of working-age adults reported that they had problems paying medical bills over the past year, and one-quarter said that they were paying off medical debt over time. The share of those with medical debt rose to more than one-third among people who were underinsured or lacked continuous coverage. Of people reporting medical debt, more than half (56%) said the amount was $2,000 or more (

We also found out that more than 30 percent of adults who were underinsured or who lacked continuous coverage said they had been contacted by a collection agency about unpaid medical bills. While the majority of adults said that the bills in collection were those they could not afford to pay, one-quarter (24%) said the bills had been the result of a billing mistake.

About one-quarter of adults who were underinsured or lacked continuous coverage said they had to change their way of life to pay their medical bills.

Nearly half of adults with any medical bill problem or with medical debt said their issue was related to a surprise bill: they received care at an in-network hospital but were billed by a doctor there who was not in their plan’s network. The No Surprises Act has outlawed surprise bills such as these, but the timeframe covered by the survey’s questions included the period before the law went into effect in January 2022.

There is A Better Way