Some 92 percent have delayed or abandoned medical care because of costs, according to a survey of 1,507 U.S.adults by financial services firm JG Wentworth.
High prices at the doctor’s office, urgent care, emergency room and more have led to 85 percent of Americans having medical debt. Collectively, American consumers have $220 billion in medical debt, according to a February poll from KFF - that’s around $958.61 per adult with medical debt.
Nearly one in five adults said their health got worse because they skipped a doctor’s visit. That problem is more acute for those 64 and younger - 42 percent say their health got worse after putting off a medical visit.
The “92% of Americans aren’t going to the doctor because it’s too expensive” claim is misleading.
The 92% figure comes from a survey of just 1,507 U.S. adults conducted for financial-services company JG Wentworth. It reportedly found that 92% had delayed or abandoned some form of medical care because of cost. That is very different from saying that 92% of Americans don’t go to the doctor, or that only 8% of Americans “attend to their health.”
There is much better independent data showing that cost really is a major problem, but the numbers are nowhere near 92%. KFF’s 2025 national polling found that 36% of adults said they had skipped or postponed needed health care during the previous year because of cost. KFF also found that 37% of insured adults reported doing so, so having insurance clearly doesn’t eliminate the problem.
Even better, an analysis using National Health Interview Survey data, rather than a private company’s survey, found that about 17% of U.S. adults delayed or did not get health care because of cost in 2024.
So the underlying story is absolutely legitimate: healthcare costs are causing millions of Americans to delay or forgo care. But presenting a JG Wentworth survey’s 92% figure as though it means “only 8% of Americans seek medical care” is a pretty substantial distortion of what the survey actually measured.
The more defensible takeaway is: American healthcare is expensive enough that a significant minority of Americans are delaying needed care because they cannot afford it. That’s bad enough without turning the statistic into something it doesn’t actually say.
92% of the time I should go to the doctor I don’t because I can’t afford to.
The other 8% I’m unconscious or need to be literally put back together beyond what super glue and electrical tape can handle.
So you’re basically a 40k dreadnought. 😂
Every report like this uses a small sample size to represent the entire population. Do you think they’re surveying 400 million people?
The question is, how did they get these 1500 people, and can it be repeated? If so, then the data is valid.
But basically, a lot hangs on how random their sample size was. Did they stick to one area? Did they stick to one age group, sex, etc. All in all, if the sample group is random, 1500 people is a valid measure for this data.
After this, there needs to be peer review. Other institutions need to be able to repeat the results with their own random groups.
But, 1500 is a great sample size. Just need to make sure it’s random and repeatable.
I fully agree that 1,500 people is a perfectly reasonable sample size for getting a useful picture of what may be happening in a much larger population. I have no argument with the methodology on that point.
My primary issue is with the title itself, which literally says that 92% of people aren’t going to the doctor. That is not what the underlying data actually establishes.
I understand that websites, news aggregators, and media outlets need compelling headlines to get people to click, read, and interact with advertisements. But there is a line between making a headline attention-grabbing and deliberately phrasing it in a way that creates a completely misleading impression of what the study actually found.
If the headline requires the reader to read the entire article before discovering that the statistic means something substantially different from what the headline plainly implies, then the headline is, for all practical purposes, misinformation. That may generate clicks, but it comes at the expense of accuracy and public trust.
Is this not too strong wording to the point where it may be downplaying it?
Would it be safer to say American healthcare is expensive enough that a significant number of Americans are delaying needed care because they cannot afford it?
Yes, that would also be true. I was just trying to be as concise as possible.
The problem with American healthcare isn’t simply that healthcare is expensive, or even that people aren’t receiving it. The deeper problem is that we’ve built healthcare into a predominantly profit-driven corporate system.
And to be clear, I don’t have a problem with people making money from medicine. There is absolutely nothing wrong with profiting from developing a revolutionary medical technology, discovering a new treatment, manufacturing equipment, or creating a drug that genuinely improves people’s lives. Innovation requires investment, and investment requires the possibility of a return.
The problem is what happens when the entire healthcare system is subjected to the same corporate incentives as every other industry: maximize revenue, minimize costs, consolidate market power, increase shareholder returns, and treat the patient as a revenue source.
Healthcare isn’t a normal consumer product. When you need a refrigerator, you can decide whether you want to buy one. When you’re having a heart attack, you don’t exactly have the luxury of shopping around for the best deal.
That’s where the fundamental problem lies. It’s not that healthcare is allowed to make money. It’s that we’ve allowed profit maximization to become one of the primary organizing principles of a system where the consumer often has virtually no ability to negotiate, comparison-shop, or simply walk away.
Thanks for the better numbers/articles.
Is the conclusion AI-written?
I use the built-in grammar editor on Google keyboard because I’m doing everything off my phone.
So that’s where you may be picking up on the AI generation thing.
But the words are mine.
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It’s a good thing you deleted that comment because it was a complete non sequitur.
Realized it. May the internet forgive me.