Just was thinking about this the other day while looking at my insurance. How do people in the U.S. accumulate huge bills without hitting their max out of pockets? Are cancer treatments not usually covered by insurance? Are the doctors that provide the treatment just happening to be out of network?
I guess I’m wondering if there is anyway I can plan to not be in a situation of me or my husband rejecting treatment and dying or having huge medical bills cripple us. We’re relatively healthy now, but the future is near.
I’d like to understand better how it seems to be so *common* for people to not be covered by their out of pocket max.
Thanks.
In: 4623
According to [2017 data from the Census Bureau](https://www.census.gov/data/tables/2017/demo/wealth/wealth-asset-ownership.html), about 19% of households in the US have medical debt. The median debt is $2000 and the mean debt is $12,430, well below the ~$20,000 OOP maximum insurance policies are required to offer. People with debt burdens like this may still go bankrupt.
Keep in mind the people who have above average amounts of debt may be uninsured and/or carrying debt from across multiple years.
Also keep in mind that bankruptcy is relatively rare. Less than 1 million individuals file for bankruptcy every year. Even the aggressive estimate that ~60% of these are due to medical debt could, potentially, be completely made up of the ~30 million people without health insurance coverage.
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