About 31 million Americans borrowed money to pay for health care last year, accumulating $74 billion in medical debt, West Health-Gallup survey finds.

Millions of Americans admit that paying for health care expenses often means going into debt based on findings in a recent study.

A new Gallup survey has suggested that 12% of American adults, or about 31 million people, were forced to borrow tens of billions of dollars in the past year to pay for personal medical bills.

Health care is so expensive that 31 million U.S. adults, or 12%, had to borrow a total of $74 billion last year to obtain medical care, new data shows. That includes people with health insurance, making such numbers even more troubling.