FRIDAY, March 13, 2026 (HealthDay News) -- Medical debt is associated with deferred care, most commonly deferred dental care, according to a study published online March 10 in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.
Kyle J. Moon, from the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, and colleagues examined whether medical, mental health, or dental needs are differentially sensitive to medical debt among U.S. adult participants in the 2023 National Health Interview Survey. Self-reported medical financial hardship ("medical debt") and probability of deferred care in the past year were examined for adults with versus without medical debt.
The researchers found that the overall prevalence of past-year medical debt was 10.7 percent and was high across all insurance categories: 19.5, 12.6, 9.3, and 8.1 percent among uninsured adults, and those with Medicaid, commercial insurance, and Medicare, respectively. Medical debt was associated with a 24.6, 17.6, and 9.3 percentage point increase in the probability of deferred dental care, medical care, and mental health care, respectively. The associations were mainly consistent by health insurance category; compared with adults covered by commercial insurance, uninsured adults had a significantly higher association between medical debt and deferred medical care (32.5 versus 16.9 percentage points).
"Policies that address affordability and the cascading toll of medical debt are critical to mitigating the health and economic impact of deferred care," Moon said in a statement.