In the past year, one in ten Mid-Hudson Valley residents did not purchase needed medicine because they did not have enough money to pay for it.
There is not much difference among the seven counties within the Mid-Hudson region. About one out of every ten residents in each county has experienced the inability to pay for needed medicine because of cost. At the extremes, 7% of Putnam County residents and 13% of Greene County residents have been in this situation.
Understandably, residents in households with low income are more likely to go without needed medication than residents in households with higher income. Three in ten residents who have a household income of less than $15,000 a year and one in four residents with a household income below $30,000 did not get needed medicine on at least one occasion in the past year because they could not pay for it. This compares with only 7% of households earning $30,000 or more per year.
Low income households with children are nearly three times more likely to forgo needed medication because of cost than households with children overall, and nearly four times more likely to do so than Mid-Hudson Valley households overall. 39% of households that have a yearly income of less than $30,000 that include children went without needed medication in the past year because of cost. This compares with 14% of all households with children in the region and 10% 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 forgo needed medication because they cannot pay for it.
It is not surprising that residents who are not insured and residents who have had gaps in their coverage over the past year are more likely than Mid-Hudson Valley households overall to go without needed medication because it is too expensive. 30% of households without health insurance and 26% of households that have had gaps in coverage over the past year did not buy needed medication because they could not afford it.
One in five residents under the age of sixty-five with a disability did not purchase needed medicine at some time in the past year because it would have been too costly.
People between the age of eighteen and thirty are nearly twice as likely as their older counterparts to go without needed medicine because they cannot afford to pay for it. 17% of adults under the age of thirty experienced this situation in the past year compared with 9% of residents over thirty years of age.
Racial and ethnic differences also exist. African American residents and Latino residents are at least twice as likely as white residents to forgo needed medicine because they cannot afford it.
