Unemployment levels are rising, and that’s not good news for those who also lose their health insurance along with their jobs.

This leads to decrease in medical service utilization, as people cancel appointments and delay elective services.

Hospitals are seeing “a huge decrease in M.R.I.’s, CAT scans, stress tests, cardiac catheterization tests, knee and hip replacements and other elective surgery.”

On one hand, there is some question about whether some advanced imaging scans and diagnostic tests are necessary, so cutting down on these tests may not seem so bad from a health cost standpoint.

However, legitimate preventive visits are also being skipped, which may further escalate health costs as diseases will be caught at a later, more expensive, stage.