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Increases in healthcare costs are stressing individuals and families more in West Virginia than in nearly every other state. The Mountain State has the fifth highest cost of health care as a share of median monthly household income in the country, at 9.14%.

Only Mississippi, Maine, Oregon and Alaska are worse, in WalletHub’s report “States Where People Spend the Most and Least on Healthcare.”

West Virginia’s extremely low median household income certainly plays into the ranking, but the rise in healthcare costs has outpaced inflation everywhere in the U.S. Twenty years ago, average annual out-of-pocket healthcare spending was about $811. Today, it is $1,514.

“Sharp increases in healthcare costs in recent years have made it difficult for some people to seek essential care,” said WalletHub analyst Chip Lupo. “Even in states with lower-than-average healthcare prices, residents’ incomes may not be enough to keep up with the cost, especially since virtually every part of Americans’ budgets have been impacted by inflation over the past few years.”

In contrast with West Virginians’ plight, Ohio ranks 35th in the report, with residents spending an average of 6.68% of their household income on healthcare. But Ohio’s median household income is considerably higher than West Virginia’s, which means those living in poorer, more rural counties are feeling greater pain than those in the Buckeye State’s economic centers.

The need to work toward affordable, accessible healthcare doesn’t stop at the state line, nor is lawmakers’ responsibility to serve ALL their constituents any different in Columbus from what it is in Charleston.

Proactive, preventative efforts can be effective ways to reduce healthcare costs down the road; as can having quality health insurance coverage.

However, “The coming cuts to Medicaid will make a lot of consumers forgo preventative healthcare, meaning health problems that could have been dealt with relatively inexpensively if caught early will now be caught later and cost much more to deal with,” said Scott Thorne, Ph.D., an instructor at Southeast Missouri State University. “Couple that with the number of people dropping the insurance they purchased through the Affordable Care Act due to insurance’s increasing costs, and we can expect to see a greater percentage of the average household budget going towards healthcare.”

In other words, if policymakers and our elected representatives don’t focus on making change now, the problem is only going to get worse.