Health insurance, medical debt, and financial well‐being
通过两项自然实验（《平价医疗法案》26岁以下条款和医疗保险资格），研究发现健康保险覆盖扩大显著减少了受影响年龄人群的医疗债务催收，但未系统改善非医疗相关的信用结果，表明医疗催收债务可能更多是财务困境的症状而非原因。
We study the financial protection provided by health insurance through two natural experiments-the Affordable Care Act's under 26 provision and Medicare eligibility. In both cases, the coverage expansion sharply reduces medical debt in collections for consumers within the affected ages but does not systematically improve credit outcomes not directly related to medical care. This is consistent with the infrequent repayment rate and lack of persistence on credit reports that we document for medical collections, which mute a key channel through which reductions in medical collections could directly affect the other financial outcomes studied here. These results help clarify the role of health insurance in broader financial health and suggest that, at least among the populations studied here, medical debts in collection may often be a symptom rather than a cause of wider financial distress as measured on credit reports.