{"id":138,"date":"2018-06-12T15:22:57","date_gmt":"2018-06-12T15:22:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/healthministryfund.blackwellstaging.com\/?p=138"},"modified":"2019-01-30T06:16:07","modified_gmt":"2019-01-30T06:16:07","slug":"and-a-third-article","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/healthfund.org\/a\/and-a-third-article\/","title":{"rendered":"Trouble Paying Medical Bills? Large Survey Shows It’s Common in Kansas and Missouri"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

BY ANDY MARSO amarso@kcstar.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

While traveling\r\nthrough Kansas talking about health care, David Jordan has heard story after\r\nstory about people drowning in a sea of medical bills they can’t pay.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

So Jordan, the\r\npresident of the United Methodist Health Ministry Fund, said he wasn’t\r\nsurprised when one of the largest surveys of Missouri and Kansas health care\r\nconsumers ever conducted showed that medical debt was one of their top\r\nconcerns.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

“One story comes\r\nto mind,” Jordan said. “In Pratt, Kansas, the owner of a property\r\nrental business, in the context of Medicaid, highlighted that oftentimes her\r\ntenants are choosing between paying their rent and paying their medical bills.\r\nThey struggle with this decision and one month they might pay their medical\r\nbills and other months they might choose to pay their rent. As a result,\r\noftentimes she has a third to half of her accounts defaulting.”<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

The survey of 4,274\r\npeople was commissioned by five nonprofit health foundations and conducted in\r\n2017 by the Research Triangle Institute.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

It found that 33\r\npercent of Kansas kids and 28 percent of Kansas adults lived in a household\r\nthat struggled to pay medical bills the year before. In Missouri, it was even\r\nmore common, with 38 percent of kids and 34 percent of adults in households\r\nthat struggled with bills.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Almost 20 percent of\r\nrespondents in both states said they had faced financial consequences from\r\nmedical debt, either asking family and friends for help, seeking personal loans\r\nor getting hounded by debt collectors.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

The survey results\r\ncome on the heels of an Urban Institute study released in\r\nDecember<\/a> that showed that in some areas of Kansas\r\nCity, about 30 percent of households have medical debt in collections.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Jordan said that can\r\nhave a ripple effect on local economies by harming credit ratings while also\r\nmaking people less likely to seek medical care.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

“Medical debt\r\nand lack of insurance is financially crippling families in Kansas and\r\nMissouri,” Jordan said.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

The survey showed\r\nthat about 20 percent of adults ages 19 to 64 in both states are uninsured, and\r\nabout 60 percent of them are working. The uninsured rate in children, who are\r\noften eligible for Medicaid, was much lower.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Uninsured rates were\r\nslightly higher for black Kansans and Missourians than whites, but markedly\r\nhigher \u2014 about 50 percent \u2014 among Hispanics.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

“The stark rate\r\nof Hispanics who are uninsured has to be called out,” said Bridget\r\nMcCandless, the president and CEO of the Health Care Foundation of Greater\r\nKansas City.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Jordan and the\r\nleaders of the various health foundations have advocated for the legislatures\r\nof both states to expand Medicaid to low-income adults under the Affordable\r\nCare Act. A majority of states have expanded and Jordan said they have higher\r\ninsured rates and lower rates of medical debt.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Medicaid eligibility\r\nin Kansas and Missouri is currently restricted mainly to children, the elderly,\r\npeople with disabilities and pregnant women.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Legislators who\r\noppose expansion under the ACA, commonly called Obamacare, have said Medicaid\r\nshould remain a program for those populations. They also balked at the expense\r\nof funding expansion, which requires states to shoulder up to 10 percent of the\r\ncosts.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Being uninsured is\r\nnot the only factor in medical debt, though. The survey’s authors said some\r\nrespondents who reported being insured also reported struggling to pay medical\r\nbills, though they had not broken out what percentage yet.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Sheldon Weisgrau, the\r\ndirector of a grant-funded program to get Kansans signed up for health\r\ninsurance, said higher deductibles and co-pays mean even people covered under\r\nprivate insurance plans often find themselves with bills they can’t easily pay.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

“Under-insurance\r\nis a huge problem,” Weisgrau said.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

McCandless said\r\nnonprofit hospitals can help ease the problem in the Kansas City area.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

As part of the\r\n“community benefit” they must show to keep their tax-exempt status,\r\nnonprofits are supposed to write off or write down some bills for low-income\r\nresidents.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

McCandless said she\r\nthought hospitals have improved their record of doing that, but “still\r\nhave room to go.”<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

“As hospitals\r\nare making more financial decisions around their bottom lines, it is critical\r\nthat we as taxpayers continue to make sure that that community benefit returns\r\nto the community,” McCandless said.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

In addition to\r\nmedical debt, Kansans and Missourians reported problems accessing some types of\r\nmedical services.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Lack of dental\r\ninsurance was a problem in both states, and so was access to mental health\r\ncare.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

People who couldn’t\r\nget mental health care said they either could not afford it, could not find a\r\nprovider who takes their insurance, could not find a provider who had an\r\nopening or didn’t know where to find care.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Brenda Sharpe, the\r\npresident and CEO of the REACH Healthcare Foundation, said she hoped those\r\nresponses will push lawmakers to expand access to mental health.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

“This is a hot topic in both states,” Sharpe said. “But we’ve seen very little action.”<\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BY ANDY MARSO amarso@kcstar.com While traveling through Kansas talking about health care, David Jordan has heard story after story about people drowning in a sea of medical bills they can’t pay. So Jordan, the president of the United Methodist Health Ministry Fund, said he wasn’t surprised when one of the largest surveys of Missouri and …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":497,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthfund.org\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthfund.org\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthfund.org\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthfund.org\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthfund.org\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=138"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/healthfund.org\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":600,"href":"https:\/\/healthfund.org\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138\/revisions\/600"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthfund.org\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/497"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthfund.org\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthfund.org\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthfund.org\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}