People who’ve racked up medical debt are more likely to skip health care that could prevent future illnesses, a new study reports.

Folks weighed down by hospital and doctor bills are much more likely to delay medical, dental and mental health care, researchers reported in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.

“Avoiding routine or preventative care can worsen patient health conditions, ultimately making them more costly to address—for patients, insurers and taxpayers who subsidize much of the medical care in the U.S.,” senior researcher Catherine Ettman, an assistant professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said in a news release.

For the study, researchers analyzed data from a 2023 federal survey on U.S. health.

More than 10% of the nearly 30,000 survey participants said they had medical debt, defined as struggling to pay any medical bills within the past 12 months.

Those who had medical debt were most likely to delay dental care, results showed.

More than 42% of people with medical debt delayed dental care, compared with nearly 18% of those without such debt, researchers found.

Dental care might be more sensitive to medical debt because it’s not always included in health insurance plans, researchers said.

Another 23% of people with medical debt said they delayed medical care, compared with about 5% of those who were debt-free, the study showed.

And about 14% of people with medical debt delayed mental health care compared to 5% of those without debt.

Uninsured adults were more likely to hold off on needed care due to medical debt – nearly 33%, compared with 17% of those who have health insurance.

Overall, more than 19% of uninsured adults, 13% of adults with Medicaid, 9% of adults with commercial insurance and 8% of adults with Medicare reported medical debt.

Delaying any needed care puts people at risk for health problems that could be caught early, researchers said.

These untreated problems also could lead to other illnesses. For example, poor dental health is linked to heart disease, brain decline and other serious conditions.

“Policies that address affordability and the cascading toll of medical debt are critical to mitigating the health and economic impact of deferred care,” lead researcher Kyle Moon, a doctoral candidate at Johns Hopkins, said in a news release.