The number of people under age 65 years who were in families having trouble paying medical bills dropped by more than 22% from 2011 to 2016, according to the National Center for Health Statistics.
For the first 6 months of 2016, there were 43.8 million people, or 16.2% of the population under age 65 years, who were in families that had problems paying medical bills in the past year, which was down from 56.5 million (21.3 % of the population) in 2011, the NCHS reported.
The drop was consistent across race/ethnicity lines, but not the start and endpoints. The percentage of non-Hispanic blacks in families having trouble paying their medical bills dropped from 27.3% in 2011 to 23% in 2016, although there was actually a small increase from 2015 to 2016. Hispanics dropped from 24.3% in 2011 to 17.4% in 2016, non-Hispanic whites dropped from 19.8% to 15.1%, and non-Hispanic Asians went from 11% to 6%, according to data collected from 579,379 people for the National Health Interview Survey.