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QuickStats: Percentage* of Adults Who Are Very Worried About Ability to Pay Medical Bills if They Get Sick or Have an Accident,† by Home Ownership§ and Age Group — National Health Interview Survey, United States, 2019¶
Weekly / June 4, 2021 / 70(22);830
* With 95% confidence intervals indicated with error bars.
† Based on a response of “very worried” to the question, “If you get sick or have an accident, how worried are you that you will be able to pay your medical bills?” Other categories included “Somewhat worried” and “Not worried at all.” Unknowns were included in the denominators when calculating percentages.
§ Defined by response to the question, “Is this house/apartment owned or rented by you [you or someone in your family]?”
¶ Estimates are based on household interviews of a sample of the civilian, noninstitutionalized U.S. population.
In 2019, 22.6% of renters were very worried about their ability to pay their medical bills if they get sick or have an accident, compared with 13.4% of homeowners. For each age group, renters were more likely than homeowners to be very worried about paying their medical bills: 20.0% compared with 12.9% among those aged 18–39 years, 29.4% compared with 16.8% among those aged 40-64 years, and 16.1% compared with 8.0% among those aged ≥65 years.
Source: National Health Interview Survey, 2019. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nhis.htm
Reported by: Cordell Golden, [email protected], 301-458-4237; Yu Sun, PhD.
Suggested citation for this article: QuickStats: Percentage of Adults Who Are Very Worried About Ability to Pay Medical Bills if They Get Sick or Have an Accident, by Home Ownership and Age Group — National Health Interview Survey, United States, 2019. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep 2021;70:830. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15585/mmwr.mm7022a4.
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