PRO Card: The Commonwealth Fund, 19 (The Commonwealth Fund, 3-6-2019, accessed on 9-28-2020, Commonwealthfund, “Survey: 79 Million Americans Have Problems with Medical Bills or Debt | Commonwealth Fund”, https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/newsletter-article/survey-79-million-americans-have-problems-medical-bills-or-debt)
A recent survey from The Commonwealth Fund finds that many people are struggling to pay their medical bills and have accumulated medical debt over time. In fact, 41 percent of working-age Americans—or 72 million people—have medical bill problems or are paying off medical debt, up from 34 percent in 2005. If you add in the 7 million elderly adults who are also dealing with these issues, a total of 79 million Americans have medical bill or debt problems.
As reported in Losing Ground: How the Loss of Adequate Health Insurance Is Burdening Working Families, problems accessing and affording needed care are widespread. Nearly two-thirds of U.S. adults under age 65, or 116 million people, had medical bill problems or debt, went without needed care because of the cost, were uninsured for a time, or were underinsured—that is, whatever coverage they had was not providing adequate protection from high medical expenses.
Analysis: This card quantifies the number of people that have problems with medical related debt. You can use this in an argument that Medicare for All would alleviate these issues through removing premiums, deductibles, and co-pays. As an impact, you can look towards our other post on reducing poverty (https://conquestbriefs.wordpress.com/2020/07/22/free-pf-debate-resources-medicare-for-all-card-of-the-week-7/).
Conquest Debate 