Many Americans Borrow Money to Pay for Their Care
If you’ve ever borrowed money to pay for health care, you’re far from alone. A new poll says 31 million Americans had to rely on lenders to pay for care for themselves or their household in 2024, borrowing an estimated $74 billion.
Most of those who borrowed to pay for care did so even though they had health insurance, according to the West Health-Gallup Survey conducted in November. While about 12% of all U.S. adults said they had borrowed to pay for medical costs for themselves or their households in the past year, that rate rose to 16% for Hispanic adults and 23% for Black adults.
Young adults, who are less likely to have significant savings or high salaries, were more likely to borrow to pay for health care, with 18% of people ages 18 to 29 doing so. Nearly a third of Black adults under age 50 reported they had to borrow to pay for care, compared to 19% of Hispanic adults and 14% of white adults.
Concern about medical debt was high among survey respondents, with nearly 60% saying they were unsure they’d have enough resources to cover health costs if they had a major medical problem.
Most of the people who borrowed money for care needed at least $500. While men were less likely to borrow for health care than women, they were more likely to take on larger loans.
The survey did not specify where the money that borrowers used came from, such as through family, friends, a bank, credit card or another lending source.
Twenty million adults in the U.S. have medical debt, with $220 billion owed in total, according to a February KFF analysis. About 3 million people have more than $10,000 in medical debt.
Lower Rate of OB-GYNs in States With Tighter Abortion Restrictions
Health workers who specialize in obstetrics and gynecology are avoiding states with stricter abortion laws, a new study in JAMA Internal Medicine confirms.
Researchers examined the supply of OB-GYN practitioners in 26 states in the wake of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the 2022 U.S. Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe v. Wade and ended the constitutional right to abortion. They looked at data from 12 states that enacted the highest level of abortion restrictions after the Dobbs decision and 14 states with abortion laws that did not change after the ruling.
When comparing the two groups, the researchers found the restrictive states had a 4.2% decrease in OB-GYN practitioners per 100,000 females of reproductive age, providing “early confirmation of reports that clinicians have migrated from states most impacted by the Dobbs decision.”
A loss of OB-GYN practitioners can affect reproductive care access, quality and equity for state residents, the researchers warned. The 12 states in the study with the tightest restrictions were Alabama, Arkansas, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas and West Virginia.
Wealth, Education Play Significant Role in Heart Disease Risk in U.S.
How much Americans earn and their education levels can influence their odds of developing heart disease, new research shows.
Published in The Lancet Regional Health-Americas, the study found the top 20% of high-income, college-educated Americans had significantly lower rates of cardiovascular disease than the rest of the nation over an almost 20-year period.
From 1999 to 2018, low-income Americans who did not graduate college had more than six times the risk of congestive heart failure as compared to their wealthier, college-educated peers. They also had more than twice the risk of angina or a heart attack, and three times the risk of a stroke.
Researchers suggested factors such as greater stress from economic insecurity, better access to health-promoting behaviors and activities, and more thorough medical and preventive care could have contributed to the disparities.
More than 940,000 people in the U.S. died of cardiovascular disease in 2022, making it the nation’s leading cause of death, according to the American Heart Association. Key risk factors include high blood pressure, high cholesterol and smoking.
Other recent public health news of note:
• Polymers used as flame retardants on electronics can break down into smaller substances, exposing people to potentially harmful substances, reports a study in Nature Sustainability. Polymers have largely been free of regulation in the past because scientists believed their larger molecule size prevented them from migrating into human bodies, the researchers said.
• Night shift work and sleep loss can increase infection risks among nurses, a new study in Chronobiology International finds. Nurses with a moderate sleep debt, meaning they’d missed up to two hours of sleep, were at about 130% higher risk for developing pneumonia or bronchitis. Workers with severe sleep debt, meaning that they’d missed more than two hours of sleep, had a nearly 290% risk.
• Because they don’t use fossil fuels or release emissions, electricity-generating wind turbines are generally considered to be environmentally friendly. But some opponents have argued they’re too noisy. A new study in Humanities & Social Sciences Communications finds the sounds they make are no more stressful to mental health than traffic noise.
• Among patients with gliomas — a malignant type of brain tumor — chemical-related gene mutations are more common in firefighters than in workers with other occupations, finds a new study in Cancer.
• Low-latitude regions of the globe are at higher risk of losing food crops from climate change, says a study in Nature Food. Warming will severely decrease the amount of agricultural land available for staples that account for two-thirds of the world’s food energy intake, such as rice, corn, wheat and soybeans, researchers said.
• Leaders at the Environmental Protection Agency are hoping to bulldoze more than two dozen regulations that work to protect the health of Americans.
Heralded by EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin on March 12 as the “most consequential day of deregulation in U.S. history,” the agency announced plans to repeal or weaken 31 standards that regulate pollution from power plants, reduce toxic vehicle emissions, protect drinking water sources and more. The Natural Resources Defense Council called the move “staggering,” with Jackie Wong, its senior vice president for climate and energy, declaring the agency had “abandoned its mission of protecting human health and the environment.”
Also concerning is EPA’s plan to formally reconsider a 2019 federal endangerment finding that confirmed the role of greenhouse gas emissions on rising U.S. temperatures. The finding has served as the basis of a slew of environmental regulations.
• New EPA guidance released March 7 says all spending on items over $50,000 must be approved by the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, according to the Associated Press. The move would harm routine work to monitor air and water pollution and other activities, says the Sierra Club.
• The Trump administration abandoned a federal lawsuit that said emissions from a Louisiana petrochemical plant threatened the health of nearby communities.
The Watch is written by Michele Late, who has more than two decades of experience as a public health journalist.