Health care expenses have proven too high for a larger majority of the millennial generation, which has continued to resist purchasing health insurance for a multitude reasons, largely due to affordability.
According to a recent Harris Poll surveying more than 1,000 millennials, “One in five adults ages 18 to 36 said they cannot afford routine health care expenses,” CNBC’s Berkeley Lovelace reported. “Many of those millennials are uninsured because of the cost. An additional 26 percent said they can afford routine health care costs, but with difficulty.”
A Commonwealth Fund report released last May observed trends in health insurance between the years of 2003 and 2014, Newsweek‘s Jessica Firger reported.
It “found that a quarter of adults with at least one chronic condition who met the criteria for being underinsured didn’t fill a prescription or skipped doses due to cost, compared with 7 percent of those who did not meet the criteria for underinsurance,” Firger said.
Paul Yeagar is one of many Americans who are not able to pay monthly health insurance costs. Yeagar suffered neck and back pain after a car accident, but resisted treatment as he was coming off of his wife giving birth and earning his master’s degree, Lovelace noted.
“I would go a month or so where I had no health insurance, hoping nothing would happen,” Yeagar said. “When I knew I was [going to be] uninsured, I would stock up on my prescription by asking doctors to write me a longer script.”
Though Yeagar’s case is not uncommon among millennials, “the percentage of uninsured millennials has steadily declined over the years, from 23 percent in 2013 to 11 percent as of April,” Transamerica Center for Health Studies Executive Director Hector De La Torre observed.
In the report, De La Torre analyzed trends in the 20-to-30 somethings knowledge of their health care options, finding young adults are often uninformed.
“Fewer than four in 10 millennials have comparison shopped for insurance,” De La Torre said. “Going the extra mile to research resources that help break down insurance options and costs can pay off in making better healthcare choices for you and your pocket.”
Though millennials are slowly making the change to purchasing health insurance, De La Torre’s findings are largely due to the fines that come with being uninsured under the Affordable Care Act.
Government fines cannot be the only incentive driving millennials’ decision to become insured.
“Instead of immediately seeing a doctor or specialist for their health care needs, they usually skip, delay, or stop receiving care,” Lovelace noted. “They often take vitamins or supplements to minimize the impact to their health, or rely on their family — particularly their mother — for health information.”
Reliance on others to avoid making the financial decision to purchase health care can only go so far, as with time, an individual’s health status will deteriorate without proper treatment.
