Americans pay completely out-of-pocket just 5 percent of the time when filling prescriptions, but there are some wide gaps in these percentages across the U.S., according to a report released Feb. 28 by personal finance service ValuePenguin.
The report was compiled using prescription spending data from the Kaiser Family Foundation and Peterson-KFF, pharmaceutical spending data from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, and population data from the U.S. Census Bureau. All the data was the latest available.
10 states with the largest shares of individual prescriptions paid out of pocket:
- North Dakota: 11.7 percent
- Mississippi: 9.86 percent
- Wyoming: 8.03 percent
- Alabama: 7.67 percent
- Arkansas: 7.58 percent
- South Dakota: 6.91 percent
- Nebraska: 6.31 percent
- Georgia: 6.3 percent
- Montana: 6.25 percent
- Idaho: 6.14 percent
10 states with the smallest shares of individual prescriptions paid out of pocket:
42. District Columbia: 3.28 percent
43. New York: 3.1 percent
44. Ohio: 3.01 percent
45. Maine: 2.86 percent
46. Delaware: 2.84 percent
47. New Hampshire: 2.8 percent
48. Rhode Island: 2.76 percent
49. Connecticut: 2.71 percent
50. Massachusetts: 2.35 percent
51. Vermont: 2.19 percent