medical debt

Nonprofit RIP Medical Debt buys up unpaid hospital bills plaguing low-income patients and frees them from having to pay.

Medical breakthroughs mean cancer is less likely to kill, but survival can come at an extraordinary cost as patients drain savings, declare bankruptcy or lose their homes, a KHN-NPR investigation finds.

The U.S. health system now produces debt on a mass scale, a new investigation shows. Patients face gut-wrenching sacrifices.

The Biden administration announced new measures to ease the financial burden of high medical bills. Here's how the measures can help and what's still missing to protect patients.

Equifax, Experian and TransUnion said that as of July that they will no longer include such debt on consumer credit reports.

Medical bills are a leading reason people get stuck in a cycle of debt. The nonprofit Upsolve created an app it calls the “TurboTax of bankruptcy” to help people hit reset and rebuild their financial lives.

Patients are often told to be smart consumers and shop around for health care before they use it. But even when you do so, estimates from insurers, hospitals and doctors can be unreliable.

Iron-deficiency anemia is often remedied with drugstore iron pills. But if that doesn't work, doctors sometimes prescribe iron infusions — and the bill for that can vary by thousands of dollars. Why?

A personal trainer in Montana had a sudden need for lifesaving dialysis after his kidneys failed. But he and his wife never expected the huge bill they received for 14 weeks of care.

When patients can't afford to pay their medical bills, many hospitals offer a payment plan — or free or discounted care. But some try to collect by suing patients and garnishing their wages.