Luca Presser

For anyone who lives in the United States, if they need any type of medical attention, whether it be a broken leg or a yearly checkup, someone needs to pay for the bill. In the United States, this has been an issue for years because healthcare is something that everyone needs, and everyone should have access to, but not everyone can afford it. In 2022, “more than 100 million people in the U.S. have been saddled with healthcare debt” which includes “about 40% of adult population” in this country (CBS #1). 

Healthcare debt is something that follows many Americans around for years, and some will not even be able to pay off this debt. Also, many Americans deny healthcare, even healthcare that is urgent, just from the fear of being in debt to their healthcare provider. The Ward family is a great example of getting abused by this system. Ally Ward was pregnant with twins and they were born 30 weeks early with many health problems including “cerebral palsy and many other issues” (CBS #1). Their kids had to spend extra weeks at the hospital and their family now owed their hospital 80,000 dollars. They are still paying this off today which shows how severe healthcare debt can be. In the United States, there are about 30 million people who have no type of health insurance (PGP Foundation). The rest of the population has some amount of health insurance. There are two main types of health insurance–public and private health insurance. Each of those two types of health insurance has many subcategories in them. All of this health insurance that people have is supposed to help pay off the hospital bills that people have, but unfortunately, 40% of Americans are still in debt due to hospital bills. It still does help people, and the more money someone has, the more health insurance they can afford. People who have low incomes and can’t afford great health insurance are targeted with the problem of debt to hospitals (Census). Many countries have free healthcare or offer mainly free healthcare to the citizens of their country. In the future, hopefully, the United States will offer free healthcare, or lower the price of it so that people do not have to pay to stay healthy.