Uninsured families typically don’t have the means to pay their hospital bills. The average  uninsured family can only afford to pay about 12 percent of hospital stays according to a report by the US Department of Health and Human Services. Hospital visits by uninsured patients who can’t pay their bills in full account for 95 percent of all the hospital bills accumulated by the uninsured, according to Insurance Journal. That amount of care equals about $73 billion a year, much of which creates higher costs for Americans who do have insurance.

Each year, close to two million uninsured Americans end up in the hospital with more than half facing bills over $10,000. According to this recent study, the vast majority of the country’s 50 million uninsured people don’t have any savings. The report found that half of families with income at 400 percent of the federal poverty level (which is $89,400 for a family of four) have financial assets totally less than $4,100.

The report found that living without health insurance is actually a financially riskier move than going without car or homeowner’s insurance. People are 50 percent more likely to have a car accident than to be hospitalized in a given year, but the average bill for a trip to the hospital is two and a half times greater than the cost of the average car accident. “Health insurance is critical in helping protect families from unexpected hospital costs,” Sherry Glied, HHS assistant secretary for planning and evaluation, told Insurance Journal. “This report shows that even higher-income uninsured families are struggling to meet the high costs of health care. No family should bear the burden of being one illness or accident away from bankruptcy.”