Despite the fact that they had coverage medical care was still cost prohibitive for one in four adults.
The results of a study conducted by a consumer health group called Families USA have now been released and are showing that despite the fact that they had purchase the coverage of an insurance plan was present, over one in four adult Americans still made choices not to seek medical care because they felt that they could not afford it.
This indicates that even though health insurance coverage may be growing, care may not yet be affordable for all.
Some of those people enrolled in their insurance plans in order to comply with the individual mandate of the Affordable Care Act. They obtained financial subsidies in order to be able to pay for the premiums for their policies and to pay for some of the costs that they would have otherwise had to face out of their pocket. Other Americans purchased their coverage directly from insurance companies in order to be able to comply with the health care reform.
Despite all of this assistance, 25.2 percent of American adults with insurance plans skipped care due to cost.
Among the survey participants who said that they had health insurance coverage just slightly more than a quarter also said that they chose not to have doctor’s appointments, medical tests, treatments, or prescription drugs because of the costs that are associated with them. As the majority of the adults who had purchased individual insurance policies did not obtain dental care, the research report did not include the choice of the policyholder not to obtain dental care.
That said, when the figures with regards to dental care were taken into consideration, then it immediately became the most common type of care that was forgone by adults due to the associated expense.
Those who were most likely to find that medical care was too expensive were adults within the lower- to middle-income ranges. This includes adults who earned somewhere between $16,200 and $29,199 in 2014, or a family of three that had a household income of $27,400 to $49,499. Nearly one in three of the adults within those income ranges stated that they had skipped medical care that they needed due to the prohibitive out of pocket expenses.
