Bankruptcy Is Not A Credit Card Issue - It Is A Health Care Issue #1

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Ediorial In Today's San Francisco Chronicle (based on MarketWatch: Illness And Injury As Contributors To Bankruptcy by Himmelstein DU, Warren E, Thorne D, Woolhandler S. at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=15689369)

No easy health-care fix
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Monday, February 7, 2005

PUT ASIDE that old saw that most debtors seek refuge in Bankruptcy Court to unload responsibility for their frivolous credit-card debt. A new Harvard University study suggests that medical spending accounts for about half of all U.S. bankruptcies.

A job and employer-paid health care was not enough to keep these Americans from seeking protection from their debtors. The majority of those filing medical bankruptcies had employer-paid insurance and a middle-class income.

In many cases, a single illness or one injury was enough to tip the person into bankruptcy. Even with insurance, the co-payments, deductibles and drug costs as well as lost work time proved more than these families could manage. "Among those whose illnesses led to bankruptcy, out-of-pocket costs averaged $11,854 since the start of the illness," the study noted.

The researchers spotlighted these problems: insurance that covered too little, or ended when illness or injury precluded working or working at the same job.

The study raises questions about looking for a panacea to the ills of the U.S. health-care system. Would universal-health care, which would offer a minimum of coverage, protect Americans from crushing medical bills or make more of them vulnerable to bankruptcy? Is tying health insurance to employment part of the problem?

Keeping America healthy and working will require broader reforms than simply finding a way to expand insurance to pay rising health-care costs.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/02/07/EDGT0ARPE31.DTL

[Coastie for Truth]

1. Bankruptcy Is Not A Credit Card Issue - It Is A Health Care Issue #2

Here is the Woolhandler et al. paper (Abstract)
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=15689369

1: Health Aff (Millwood). 2005 Feb 2

MarketWatch: Illness And Injury As Contributors To Bankruptcy.

Himmelstein DU, Warren E, Thorne D, Woolhandler S.

Harvard Medical School and a primary care physician at Cambridge Hospital in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

In 2001, 1.458 million American families filed for bankruptcy. To investigate medical contributors to bankruptcy, we surveyed 1,771 personal bankruptcy filers in five federal courts and subsequently completed in-depth interviews with 931 of them. About half cited medical causes, which indicates that 1.9-2.2 million Americans (filers plus dependents) experienced medical bankruptcy. Among those whose illnesses led to bankruptcy, out-of-pocket costs average $11,854 since the start of illness; 75.7 percent had insurance at the onset of illness. Medical debtors were 42 percent more likely than other debtors to experience lapses in coverage. Even middle-class insured families often fall prey to financial catastrophe when sick.

And here is a link to the full paper (Acrobat PDF)-->

http://content.healthaffairs.org/cgi/reprint/hlthaff.w5.63v1
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/utils/lofref.fcgi?PrId=3051&uid=15689369&db=pubmed&url=http://content.healthaffairs.org/cgi/pmidlookup?view=reprint&pmid=15689369

[Coastie for Truth]

2. This is a more pressing issue then

Piratizing Social Security to turn it into Social INSecurity as some kind of Multi Trillion Dollar Three Card Monte scam.