Medical debt
According to a 2019 poll from the Pew Research center, American citizens are much more worried about health care issues as a top public matter and concern, especially medical expenses, rather than the economy and terrorism.
[3][4] One of the surveys that has been conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation showed that the amount of debt incurred by individuals for health care costs is likely to cause personal bankruptcy.
The study, which involved adults with employer-sponsored insurance, found that while 20% of those surveyed have been approached by agencies, almost 9% of people declared their bankruptcy due to the health expenses.
[14] In general, data has shown that individuals in the United States pay nearly double the amount of money on healthcare in their lifetime than those in other wealthy countries.
A 2019 study of health provision carried out for the Los Angeles Times reported in the United Kingdom, Sweden, France, Germany and Japan about 2.8% of citizens struggled with high medical bills compared to about 16.6% of Americans.
[24] In the same year, a World Health Organization analysis of the spending of patients in 36 countries found that only 1 household in 90 in the Netherlands risked facing prohibitive medical expenses.
[25] According to another report by the Los Angeles Times, countries such as the United Kingdom and Canada that have state-funded health provision, and Germany and the Netherlands where private insurers have tight limits on the amount of patients may be charged, few people struggle to afford medical expenses.
Research based on available data from 2018 indicated that the amount of unaffordable health care by individuals in the USA (7.4%) was considerably higher than European states such as France where only 1.9% of people faced concerns regarding medical bills, Germany (2.4%), the UK (1.4%), the Netherlands (1.1%), and non-European countries such as Australia (3.2%) and Japan (2.6%).
[28] The PAN Foundation is considered to be "an independent, national 501 (c)(3) organization dedicated to helping federally and commercially insured people living with life-threatening, chronic and rare diseases with the out-of-pocket costs for their prescribed medications" and the non-profit organization has provided approximately 1 million patients those are underinsured with a financial aid equaling to $3 billion since 2004.
The debt was purchased for just $60,000 through a company named "Central Asset Recovery Professionals" (or CARP, a pun on the bottom feeding fish) which Oliver said had cost just $50 to create.
The nonprofit looks for bundled packages of debt from first or third party agencies which the group negotiates to purchase at discounted prices (pennies on the dollar).
