Personal Bankruptcy: It's Health Care, Not Credit Cards
A recent article cites a study by Dr. David Himmelstein, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, and describes the following ominous results:
"Half of all U.S. bankruptcies are caused by soaring medical bills and most people sent into debt by illness are middle-class workers with health insurance... affecting 2,000,000 people per year."
Himmelstein noted that, "the average bankrupt person surveyed had spent $13,460 on co-payments, deductibles and uncovered services if they had private insurance. People with no insurance spent an average of $10,893 for such out-of-pocket expenses."
As companies whittle away their plans and pass more of the responsibility onto employees, we'll surely see more people who are close to the edge go over. So much for managed care and the expectation that it will reduce out of pocket expenses! And, by the way, the study noted that only 1% of bankruptcies were due to credit card debt.