Trends in charges and association with defaults on medical payments in uninsured Americans: a disproportionate burden in ethnic minorities - a retrospective observational study.

ABSTRACT:

Objective

To evaluate whether medical event charges are associated with uninsured patients' probability of medical payment default and whether there exist racial/ethnic disparity gaps in medical payment defaults.

Design

We use logistic regression models to analyse medical payment defaults. Our adjusted estimates further control for a rich set of patient and medical visit characteristics, region and time fixed effects.

Setting

Uninsured US adult (non-elderly) population from 2002 to 2017.

Participants

We use four nationally representative samples of uninsured patients from the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey across office-based (n=39 967), emergency (n=3269), outpatient (n=1739) and inpatient (n=340) events.

Primary and secondary outcome measures

Payment

SUBMITTER: Linde S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9125734 | biostudies-literature | 2022 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature