Vicki Ibarra opens a late medical bill for her son at her home on Saturday, February 2, 2019 in Fresno, California. Credit: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post/Getty

The for-profit U.S. healthcare system is so broken that a growing number of people who are fortunate enough to have private insurance coverage are still unable to afford doctor visits and other essential services due to soaring costs—leaving a larger number of Americans with unmet medical needs today than there were two decades ago.

That’s a central finding of a new study by Harvard University researchers published Monday in the peer-reviewed journal JAMA Internal Medicine, examining 20 years of government data between 1998 and 2017.

The study found that despite a major expansion of insurance coverage in the U.S. during that period—most significantly through the 2010 Affordable Care Act (ACA)—”most measures of unmet need for physician services have shown no improvement, and financial access to physician services has decreased.” The study’s authors noted that the rise of “narrow networks, high-deductible plans, and higher co-pays” has contributed to the growth of unmet […]