Decrease in adults (<65 years) and children in families with difficulty paying medical bills
TUESDAY, June 4 (HealthDay News) -- There has been a slight decrease in the percentage of individuals aged younger than 65 years who are in a family with difficulty paying their medical bills, according to a June data brief issued by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS).
Robert A. Cohen, Ph.D., from the NCHS in Hyattsville, Md., and colleagues used data for 155,321 participants in the National Health Interview Survey Family Core and Supplemental components from January 2011 through June 2012 to examine trends in difficulty paying medical bills.
The researchers found that there was a decrease in the percentage of people who were in families having difficulty paying medical bills, from 21.7 percent in the first six months of 2011 to 20.3 percent in the same period of 2012 for individuals younger than 65 years, and from 23.7 to 21.8 percent for children aged 0 to 17 years. For individuals younger than 65 years, families with difficulty paying their medical bills included 36.3 percent of those who were uninsured, 14.0 percent of those with private insurance coverage, and 25.6 percent of those with public coverage. In addition, 30.3 percent of poor, 34.1 percent of near-poor, and 14.1 percent of not-poor individuals were in families with difficulty paying medical bills.
"The percentage of persons under age 65 in families having problems paying medical bills decreased from 21.7 percent (57.8 million) in the first six months of 2011 to 20.3 percent (54.2 million) in the first six months of 2012," the authors write.
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