• Katelyn Jetelina writes (with Hayden Rooke-Ley) in her Your Local Epidemiologist blog on the wildly disproportionate cost/delivery ratio of health care in the United States; read “5 ways our health care system has become utterly insane” to get a summary of that sad story. One tidbit – wages may have kept pace with inflation over the last 15 years, but they have decidedly NOT kept pace with health insurance costs. And then there’s this:
“One in three Americans has medical debt, and more than half worry they’ll fall into debt any time they use the health care system. That fear changes behavior: people delay appointments, skip medications, or avoid care altogether…Medical debt is now the most common form of debt in collections ahead of credit cards, utilities, or personal loans. Nearly 60% of those in medical debt have insurance.”