Dive Brief:
- Despite having employer-sponsored insurance, 40% of U.S. workers said they postpone their healthcare needs over concerns about cost, according to the results of a study released March 14 by Paytient, a health payment account.
- One in 6 of the 1,516 respondents said their work was affected by untreated conditions they couldn’t afford to address, and 17% said they’ve left a job to afford better healthcare, per the survey, which Paytient commissioned from independent research group Nonfiction.
- “The results of this study spotlight the invisible insecurity of insured Americans as health insurance alone no longer guarantees access to care. Bringing this narrative into the national dialogue on healthcare highlights an opportunity for employers to affordably ensure employees have the security and certainty that they will be able to access and pay for care when they need it,” Brian Whorley, founder and CEO of Paytient, said in a statement.
Dive Insight:
Having health insurance doesn’t guarantee access to healthcare or the ability to pay for it, reports have shown.
Forty-three percent of workers with employer-sponsored insurance have experienced medical debt, according to the results of a survey released Feb. 27 by healthcare advocacy collective Goodroot.
Twenty-seven percent of nonsenior adults in the U.S. are part of families with some kind of healthcare-related financial strain, including a high out-of-pocket burden, medical debt or access to care restricted by finances, a study published in November in Health Affairs found.
And those with benefits don’t always have the ones they need. Just shy of half of U.S. employees say their benefits don’t meet their needs, and 59% say they have “benefits envy” of friends’ and relatives’ coverage, according to the results of a survey by Perceptyx, an employee experience company.