A recent employer survey conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation revealed that the average annual deductible for a single worker with job-based insurance amounted to $1,400 in 2021. That's nearly four times as much as it was in 2006. Additionally, research from the Health Care Cost Institute discovered that medical care prices had increased 16% over four years.

This lethal combination of high out-of-pocket costs and high prices has led to staggering amounts of medical debt for Americans. An investigation by KHN and NPR found more than half of U.S. adults reporting they had gone into debt over the past five years because of medical or dental bills. Some have said they don't expect to ever pay it off.

An extensive medical debt policy study, featuring a first-of-its-kind scorecard of states, suggests that patients don't have to go it alone if states adopt robust policies that can help prevent medical debt in the first place and aid in problem-solving for debt already incurred.