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A shocking 92 percent of US adults are not going to the doctor because it’s too expensive
(www.independent.co.uk)
this post was submitted on 09 Sep 2026
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I only go to the doctor once a year, and only because they hold my prescriptions hostage until I comply.
Its 250 dollars for 15 minutes of asking how I was doing and if I had any issues, before sending in my refills.
I have an ongoing issue thats causing me physical disability and probable permanent damage, my doctor told me to go to a specialist.
I called 10 specialists, 9 refused to accept an uninsured/self pay patient. the other one was willing to see an uninsured/self pay patient.. but only if I paid a 800 new patient fee, in addition to the regular office visit cost.
This is why I dont go to the doctor.
"Shocking"
Shocking to nobody
Insurers love people who pay their work plan's monthly premium without ever visiting a doctor. It's free money!
Its why the invented copay!
How is this shocking
I didn't expect it to be this high, because I remember the debates around Obamacare. People would say "but I like my insurance", and I don't know if there has been a massive change since then, or if people are holding these contradictory ideas in their heads.
There is definitely a section that can't afford to use their insurance and also is terrified they will lose it.
I went to urgent care, waited for 20 - 30 minutes, they called back to the back room, spent 10 minutes in the back before they said they couldn’t help me. Go to a specialist. $275 bill
"Shocking"
Fuck you. Literally everyone in the US absolutely makes this decision for themselves and their families regularly. It isn't "shocking". It is the reality we're all dealing with.
What would be shocking is if anyone in charge gave a fuck about the people instead of their donors and moved to do something about it.
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I had cancer 3 years ago. I will be paying off my treatment costs for the next 10 years, like I will be fully in remission for over 5 years from cancer and still paying off my treatment. So maybe that is why.
Yeah, like I could afford a regular visit but I worked in healthcare and I've seen the bills people get hit with because things are coded wrong or denied by their insurance or whatever. I'm not rolling the dice on that unless something's really wrong with me.
Guys, did you know if you put water on something, it becomes wet?
Among those 92% there have to be people who vote Republican. Is it really more important for them "to own the libs" than having affordable/universal healthcare?
Its too expensive and most of the time you don't get any help.
The last few times I have gone to a doctor, its basically been shrugged shoulders and a bunch of surprise bills for the next few months.
most of the time you don’t get any help.
That hasn't been my experience at all. Actually getting in to see a doctor has been a big deal for me, personally, over the last few years.
Just last month, I had a really painful chronic cough going on weeks. Went in, got diagnosed with bacterial pneumonia, handed a prescription for antibiotics, and was feeling significantly better within hours after taking it.
A year before that, had a days long debilitating back spasm. Dragged myself to an urgent care, got an injection and some oral anti-inflammatories, and was back on my feet before the end of the week.
My son was born premature, two years ago. The NICU in Houston took him from death's door to on track for normal development over an intensive 18 weeks of care.
Mother-in-law got diagnosed with breast cancer six months ago. Was in treatment inside two weeks. Surgery at MD Anderson. Pronounced cancer clear a month later.
And then there's COVID. At least three different instances where a visit to the doctor radically improved the condition of myself and my family.
Health Care in this country is borderline miraculous when you can actually get it.
But then the bills come rolling in, and it feels significantly less magical.
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financial services firm JG Wentworth.
I never considered that company a "financial services firm" - financial rip off firm is more like it.
Sad thing is, I can easily see this being true.
Yep, the insurance companies want us dead. They are trying to thin our those who are "weak" when it was thier fault that we are physically weak in the first place. They just want to kill people as far as I can tell. Helping is secondary.
The “92% of Americans aren’t going to the doctor because it’s too expensive” claim is misleading.
The 92% figure comes from a survey of just 1,507 U.S. adults conducted for financial-services company JG Wentworth. It reportedly found that 92% had delayed or abandoned some form of medical care because of cost. That is very different from saying that 92% of Americans don't go to the doctor, or that only 8% of Americans “attend to their health.”
There is much better independent data showing that cost really is a major problem, but the numbers are nowhere near 92%. KFF's 2025 national polling found that 36% of adults said they had skipped or postponed needed health care during the previous year because of cost. KFF also found that 37% of insured adults reported doing so, so having insurance clearly doesn't eliminate the problem.
Even better, an analysis using National Health Interview Survey data, rather than a private company's survey, found that about 17% of U.S. adults delayed or did not get health care because of cost in 2024.
So the underlying story is absolutely legitimate: healthcare costs are causing millions of Americans to delay or forgo care. But presenting a JG Wentworth survey's 92% figure as though it means “only 8% of Americans seek medical care” is a pretty substantial distortion of what the survey actually measured.
The more defensible takeaway is: American healthcare is expensive enough that a significant minority of Americans are delaying needed care because they cannot afford it. That's bad enough without turning the statistic into something it doesn't actually say.
92% of the time I should go to the doctor I don't because I can't afford to.
The other 8% I'm unconscious or need to be literally put back together beyond what super glue and electrical tape can handle.
So you're basically a 40k dreadnought. 😂
Every report like this uses a small sample size to represent the entire population. Do you think they're surveying 400 million people?
The question is, how did they get these 1500 people, and can it be repeated? If so, then the data is valid.
But basically, a lot hangs on how random their sample size was. Did they stick to one area? Did they stick to one age group, sex, etc. All in all, if the sample group is random, 1500 people is a valid measure for this data.
After this, there needs to be peer review. Other institutions need to be able to repeat the results with their own random groups.
But, 1500 is a great sample size. Just need to make sure it's random and repeatable.
I fully agree that 1,500 people is a perfectly reasonable sample size for getting a useful picture of what may be happening in a much larger population. I have no argument with the methodology on that point.
My primary issue is with the title itself, which literally says that 92% of people aren’t going to the doctor. That is not what the underlying data actually establishes.
I understand that websites, news aggregators, and media outlets need compelling headlines to get people to click, read, and interact with advertisements. But there is a line between making a headline attention-grabbing and deliberately phrasing it in a way that creates a completely misleading impression of what the study actually found.
If the headline requires the reader to read the entire article before discovering that the statistic means something substantially different from what the headline plainly implies, then the headline is, for all practical purposes, misinformation. That may generate clicks, but it comes at the expense of accuracy and public trust.
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I mean I'm working at a fortune 500 company and with my stupid high deductible plan even I don't want to go unless it's something that pretty urgent. I mean I already pay 10K+ a year for my family and then it's another 10K to meet the deductible and every doctor's appointment that's not the annual checkup is two to three hundred dollars and urgent care is even more expensive so yeah, it's basically unless there's something absolutely wrong, it's avoid the doctor and only go when things are basically unbearable even knowing I could afford to go.
US heathcare is a joke and unpopular opinion but the ACA, aka, Federal Romneycare, needs to be ripped out and actual universal healthcare needs to be enacted.
America complains about Canadians paying more taxes but I guarantee you I have never paid $10k a year in taxes that would just go towards our free healthcare.
Universal healthcare will happen in the USA once my fellow Americans figure out that paying $8K a year in premiums is more than $2K a year in taxes. So. It could take awhile.
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I just (last year) got a fantastic new job with great pay and benefits. Which means I am only responsible for the first 5000. It's been 12 years since I have seen a doctor. I'm in one of the worst health care states in the union. Just lucky so far. This is the state of healthcare in the usa.
I've had "good" insurance for almost a decade now, but I could never find a doctor that was in-network, taking new patients, and less than 50 miles away. I was calling around locally every three months, like clockwork, for years.
I finally got lucky this week, so I've got an appointment in October. The receptionist asked me when my last physical was, and I said 2004. She said, "Oh, so not in the last year then?"
Meanwhile I'm over here just being too lazy to schedule an appointment. There are a few issues i should really get some eyes on at some point but none of them seem urgent enough at the moment to have someone who will care less than I do about them tell me they could do this or that but it might take forever and not do much to help and I should probably just stretch more.
Who could have seen this happening?
Just read the stories about how things were in Britain when the National Health Service was created.
One of the things which was pretty common before the NHS was created was this kind of thing - most people would only ever go to the doctor when they were already very sick for a while and their health just kept getting worse.
After the National Health Service was created overall healthcare costs actually went down because people were actually going to the doctor much earlier and less sick, plus under Universal Healthcare "Preventive Medicine" makes sense even just from an economic point of view because it reduces the costs of the whole system.
This is true, better health and lower costs, but all the proof in the world won't change the maga team to support it. Some of them have what they think is "good insurance" and think they're special and don't want it for all. Lots of selfishness rather than raise all boats, it's part of the cowboy lore they like to pretend they are lol.
The core value of both MAGA politicians and MAGA supporters is "what's in it for me", not what's better for people in general.
In fact, the same applies to most Democrat politicians and possibly even most Democrat supporters.
Selfish Individualism is kinda the thing which is extra extra in the US compared to, say, Europe were there either a large minority or maybe even a majority still hold at least some pro-social principles
well yeah 64 and younger because you can get medicare at 65. of course that actually only pays 80%.
Doesn't sound all that shocking in a system that would rather you just die cheaply somewhere.
Well, Trump says if Republicans win Midterms, he has $5000 to give every American Adult.
The problem is my doctor doesn't accept trump coins
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