Mounting medical debt angers state residents
NEW HAVEN — John Carlson is one of many facing medical debt in Connecticut, and yet he considers himself lucky.
Now 19, Carlson developed a soft tissue cancer at the age of 16 that at one point left him unable to speak or eat. The Middletown resident spent two years fighting to become cancerfree and his parents took out $20,000 in loans to cover the cost of his treatments.
“I’m fortunate because not everybody has parents that can do this and not everybody has insurance that covers these costs,” Carlson told U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy, DConn., during a medical debt forum Thursday at Fair Haven
Community Health Care. “No person deserve to be burdened with hundreds of thousand of dollars of debt just so they can stay alive. This is not a luxury like a brandnew car.”
Murphy, who began holding medical debt forums last month in Fairfield County, said “there is a broad debate about this that we are going to have as part of the presidential campaign,” he said. “But right now, we’ve got this growing crisis of medical debt.”
Murphy said he supports the singlepayer health care plan proposed by U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, IVt., who is seeking the Democratic presidential nomination.
About 17 percent of Connecticut residents between the ages of 18 and 64 have pastdue medical debt, according to data compiled by the UConn Health Disparities Institute. That puts the state below the nationwide average of almost 24 percent for that demographic.
Among those with medical debt nationwide, more than 43 percent of them have used up all their savings to pay their bills. About one in five delays education or career plans because of mounting debt.
One health care facility in the state — Danbury Hospital — accounted for about half of all the lawsuits brought by hospitals over unpaid bills in the state in 2016.
Kristen Whitney Daniels of Shelton told Murphy that at one point, she was paying $2,400 a month to get insulin to treat her diabetes. It wasn’t until she contacted an outofstate community health center that she was able to get the insulin she need for $14 per month.
Joanna Heller, of Guilford, laid the blame for the medical debt crisis at the feet of health care companies and insurers.
“The corporations are driving this whole thing, are calling all the shots,” Heller said. “Why are they running the show?”
Murphy said the United States is the only country in the civilized world that doesn’t place price caps on pharmaceuticals.
“The market doesn’t work for pharmaceuticals the way it works for cereal or used cars,” he said.