Borrowing to Stay Healthy: How Credit Card Debt Is Related to Medical Expenses (PDF; 1.41 MB)
Source: Demos
From press release:

Key findings from the report include:

• Twenty-nine percent of low- and middle-income households with credit card debt reported that medical expenses contributed to their current balances. Within that group, 69 percent had a major medical expense in the previous three years.
• Low- and middle-income medically indebted households had higher levels of credit card debt than those without medical debt–on average 46 percent higher. ($11,623 versus $7,964).
• Low- and middle-income medically indebted households had higher debt-to-income ratios than non-medically indebted households.
• Among the medically indebted, young adults between the ages of 18 and 34 had the highest level of average credit card debt ($13,303) of any age group. Credit card debt levels of medically indebted young adults ($13,303) were also considerably higher than credit card debt levels for non-medically indebted young adults (7,450).
• The medically indebted are more likely to be called by bill collectors than the non-medically indebted (62 percent versus 38 percent).

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 16th, 2007 at 6:23 pm and is filed under Business and economics, Consumer issues, Health and healthcare. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.