Yes, you're correct. The NPR article does state that it is 1 in 4 adults with debt owe more than 5k.
The article also states:
"Health care debt in the U.S. now affects more than 100 million people, according to a nationwide KFF poll conducted for this project. The toll has been especially high on Black communities: Fifty-six percent of Black adults owe money for a medical or dental bill, compared with 37% of white adults."
The US has a population of ~335 million people. If 100 million people have medical debt, that would be 1 in 3 people. And the census date seems to back that to a point.
The problem with all of these stats are that the definition of debt can change which can swing the number fairly widely. The KFF poll that is referenced by NPR mentions the debt is framed as either actual debt or other forms of debt such as "debt that patients accrue is hidden as credit card balances, loans from family, or payment plans to hospitals and other medical providers." Which means that if this form of debt is the metric that makes sense (I think it does given that the above are all forms of debt), then the percentage of adults
is really not 1 in 4, but 1 in 3, which is even more disturbing.
Taking such an expansive view of debt and things become largely meaningless. You end up defining some billionaires as being in medical debt. Here’s an analysis that ignores debt under 250$ as trivial.
“This analysis shows that 20 million people (nearly 1 in 12 adults) owe medical debt. The SIPP survey suggests people in the United States owe at least $220 billion in medical debt. Approximately 14 million people (6% of adults) in the U.S. owe over $1,000 in medical debt and about 3 million people (1% of adults) owe medical debt of more than $10,000.”
But of course that’s a biased survey. ~88 billion of debt that shows up on people’s credit reports suggesting the actual numbers are likely significantly below that estimate.
How many Americans have health care debt?