About one in ten residents did not visit a doctor because they could not pay for it in the past year.
Greene County has the greatest proportion of residents, 16%, who have missed or skipped a visit to a doctor on at least one occasion in the past year because of cost. 14% of Ulster County residents have also experienced this situation. About one in ten residents in each of the other five counties have experienced this problem.
Nearly a quarter of residents whose annual household income falls below $30,000 have missed or skipped a visit to the doctor at least once in the past year because they could not afford to pay for it.
About three in ten residents who have received public assistance in the past year skipped a doctor’s appointment because of cost.
Low income households with children are twice as likely as all households with children and more than three times as likely as Mid-Hudson Valley households as a whole to forgo a visit to the doctor because of cost. 37% of households that have a yearly income of less than $30,000 and have children had to deal with this situation in the past year. This compares with 16% of all households with children in the region and 11% of Mid-Hudson Valley households as a whole.
Households with young children are twice as likely as Mid-Hudson Valley households as a whole to have had to skip a doctor’s appointment because they could not afford it.
Not unexpectedly, uninsured residents are three times more likely to skip a visit to a doctor because of cost than Mid-Hudson Valley residents as a whole. Households that experienced a gap in health care coverage over the past year are two and a half times more likely to also miss a visit to the doctor because they cannot afford it.
Residents with a disability under the age of sixty-five are also more likely to have missed seeing a doctor at least once in the past year because it would have been too expensive.
Race also plays a role. 18% of Latino residents and 18% of African American residents have not seen a doctor on at least one occasion in the past year because it would have been too expensive compared with just 10% of white residents.
