Medical bills figure in personal bankruptcy

[RamboLiberal]

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/04219/357527.stm

As more Americans struggle to pay for health care, legal experts worry that a growing number of them will have little choice but to file for personal bankruptcy if they become overwhelmed with medical debt.

Personal bankruptcies of all sorts are increasing in Pittsburgh and across the country, and federal statistics don't indicate exactly what proportion of bankruptcies stem from unpaid medical bills.

But the amount of medical debt in personal bankruptcy cases was substantial in 1999, said Melissa Jacoby, a law professor at the University of North Carolina who studies the issue. And there's reason to think the situation hasn't improved since then, as costs have climbed and the number of people lacking health insurance has grown.

Jacoby and colleagues published a study of bankruptcy filings that estimated more than 500,000 middle class families turned to the bankruptcy courts for help following an illness or injury in 1999, alone. A separate study published this summer reported that nearly 20 million American families during 2003 had trouble paying medical bills, with nearly two-thirds of those families saying the medical bills made it difficult to pay for other basic necessities.

[depakid]

1. Consider that other creditors are affected too

which is yet another cost of our profoundly stupid for profit healthcare system. The fact that debtors are unable to pay off other creditors creates a further drain on the economy and amounts to a health care tax on each one of them. Moreover, for each person who cannot pay their healthcare bill, the rest of us who may be able to end up picking up the collective bill in the form of annual double digit heallth care inflation.

A centralized, single payor system would alleviate these "hidden taxes" as well as relieving employors of a major payroll expense that's largely out of their control.

[eridani]

2. And when per capita health care expenditures are calculated--

--this kind of expense isn't even figured in.