Associate Professor of Public Policy Wesley Yin’s research into the soaring cost of medical debt in the United States was featured in the UCLA Anderson Review. A study co-authored by Yin and published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that medical bills sent to collection agencies totaled an estimated $140 billion as of June 2020. That sum, which is bigger than all other sources of debt in collection combined, was tallied even before the pandemic saddled COVID-19 sufferers with unpaid doctor and hospital bills. Medical debt is concentrated in low-income neighborhoods, in the South and in states that refused to expand Medicaid coverage under the Affordable Care Act. “Communities that had been most burdened by medical debt have become even worse off, in absolute and relative terms, due to their leaders choosing not to expand Medicaid,” Yin said. “The results are important because they indicate that these problems are within the control of public policy.”