The credit consequences of unpaid medical bills

Kenneth Brevoort, Daniel Grodzicki and Martin Hackmann

Journal of Public Economics, 2020, vol. 187, issue C

Abstract: This paper quantifies the costs of leaving medical bills unpaid and what these costs imply for the value of health insurance to beneficiaries. We argue that a large fraction of unpaid medical bills is sent to third-party collections and reported to credit bureaus, with detrimental effects on patients' credit outcomes. Combining a large panel of credit records with data on credit offers, we find that the ACA Medicaid expansion reduced newly-reported medical collections by $5.89 billion and led to better terms of credit. We find that the financial benefits of Medicaid at least double when including this indirect credit channel.

Keywords: Unpaid medical bills; Credit consequences; Value of Medicaid (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D14 H51 I13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (14)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0047272720300670
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:pubeco:v:187:y:2020:i:c:s0047272720300670

DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2020.104203

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Public Economics is currently edited by R. Boadway and J. Poterba

More articles in Journal of Public Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().