Opinion: Up to your neck in medical debt? You probably live in a red state

Having medical issues is bad enough, but being weighed down by medical debt? It’s enough to make you sick.

The data appears to skew along political lines, meaning that debt is concentrated in states that have not participated in the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion program. That program, launched by then-President Barack Obama in 2010, has enabled millions of Americans to be covered by Medicaid—if their governors and state legislatures approved such expansion.

This means that people in debt tend to first pay bills that are simply more important, like utility and auto loans. After all, not paying your electric or gas bill could result in having these things shut off, and skipping your car loan—auto loan debt grew in 2020 to a record $1.37 trillion, says credit rating agency Experian—could result in your car being repossessed.

This is an issue that is high on the agenda with President Biden and Congressional Democrats, some of whom are pushing for federal intervention to provide coverage for millions of Americans who have been shut out of Medicare expansion. But some Democrats say that there are bigger priorities than spending billions to fix a problem that has been created by Republican obstructionism. “There are many competing priorities,” Texas Democrat Lloyd Doggett told the New York Times last month.

The goverment should lower the medical cost to fix the problem.

Meaningless. It just depends on wether the individual or the state (taxpayers) owes the $$$. We MUST lower the cost of medical care before we switch to government-paid healthcare. Otherwise we will never have transparency and the $200 aspirin stays.

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