Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
the number one (and only) reason for personal bankruptsies is you CANT PAY YOUR BILLS
1. Filing for bankruptcy isn't cheap, either. According to a study released this month by the National Bureau of Economic Research, the average bankruptcy fees increased from $921 to $1,477 after 2005's BAPCPA was enacted
2. Chapter 7 bankruptcy discharges certain debts, while Chapter 13 may reduce or reorganize debts. However, neither one offers an easy solution
The idea that half of all bankruptcies are caused by medical debt has become part of the common folklore.
The claim, first made in a 2005 Health Affairs article, is at variance with four decades of economic research, including a finding that even large medical bills have no impact on family living standards.
The paper by David Himmelstein, Elizabeth Warren, Deborah Thorne, and Steffie Woolhandler was published as a Health Affairs web exclusive on February 5, 2005. The authors are strong proponents of government run health care.
The data comes from 1,250 personal bankruptcy cases, assumed to be representative of the almost 1.5 million households that filed for bankruptcy in 2001. The data on each bankruptcy were abstracted from court records and supplemented with 931 telephone interviews. The paper's conclusions about illnesses in households were based on medical interviews conducted with 391 people. The paper does not specify how those people were selected. It does say that Himmelstein and Woolhandler (H & W), both MDs, coded the diagnoses given by debtors into the categories used for the analysis.
The classifications used to determine a medical bankruptcy were odd. Only 28.3 percent of the sample cited self-reported illness or injury as a cause of bankruptcy. However, H & W managed to almost double that figure (to 54.5 percent) by counting the following as "illnesses":
•1. A birth or addition of a new family member
•2. A death in a family
•3. A drug or alcohol addiction
•4. Uncontrolled gambling
•5. Loss of at least 2 weeks of work-related income due to illness or injury by anyone in the household
•6. Out-of-pocket medical bills of $1,000 in the two years before filing by anyone in the household
•7. Mortgaging a home to pay medical bills.
In a 2005 article in the Northwestern University Law Review, Prof. Todd J. Zywicki called the $1,000 threshold for contributing medical debt "indefensible." That's an understatement. By H & W criteria, a bankruptcy with $50,000 in student loans and $1,001 in unpaid medical bills would be classified as a "medical bankruptcy." Moreover, the average U.S. household had out-of-pocket expenses of $2,182 in 2001!
In a 2006 review (gated) of the H & W study results in Health Affairs, David Dranove and Michael L. Millenson:
•Recalculate the medical bankruptcy rate using the data given in the H & W paper. They conclude that just 17 percent of the H & W sample "had medical expenditure bankruptcies," although it cannot be stated "with any degree of certainty whether medical spending was the most important cause of bankruptcy."
•Explain that "four decades of studies have addressed the bankruptcy-medical spending connection" and that the results from those studies are much closer to their 17 percent estimate than to the 54.5 percent estimates of H & W.
•Cite a 2002 Fay, Hurst, and White American Economic Review study, which found no statistical link between bankruptcies and health problems.
•Cite a 1999 Domowitz and Sartain Journal of Finance study, which found that high medical debt raised the probability of bankruptcy for the tiny proportion of the population that had high medical debt, but that at the margin, credit cards were the largest single contribution to bankruptcy.
Moreover, Helen Levy in an Economic Research Initiative on the Uninsured working paper estimated the effect of being diagnosed with a serious new health condition, (cancer, diabetes, heart attack, chronic lung disease, or stroke) and found that household consumption "remains smooth" in the face of serious health shocks for both insured and uninsured households.
YET:
A study by the Department of Justice examined more than 5,000 bankruptcy cases between 2000 and 2002. It found that 54% of bankruptcies involve no medical debt, and more than 90% have medical debt of less than $5,000. Even among the minority of bankruptcies that report medical debt, only a few have enough to cause personal bankruptcy.
health CARE costs lots of money...insurance is a WAY OF PAYING IT
we would NOT save a penny...why because singlepayer (or UHC/NHC) would not control the costs of CARE..or any of the RELATED COSTS for providing that care
there is ZERO PROOF that bankruptcies are due to medical bills
ie: some guy claims bankruptcy: has 30,000 dollars debt to CC, 200,000 debt to a folded mortage, has 20,000 debt to a car payment, and 6000 to a medical bill from 3 years ago....yet elizabeth warren((and the faulty study in the American Journal of Medicine conducted by Dr. David Himmelstein and other researchers from Harvard University and Ohio University)) will claim that that bankruptcy was due to medicaL
* The personal bankruptcy rate was actually higher in Canada in 2006 and 2007 (0.30 percent for both years) than in the United States (0.20 percent and .27 percent).
* Medical spending was only one of several contributing factors in 17 percent of U.S. bankruptcies -- medical debts accounted for only 12 to 13 percent of the total debts among American bankruptcy filers who cited medical debt as one of their reasons for bankruptcy.
* Medical reasons were cited as the primary cause of bankruptcy by approximately 15 percent of bankrupt Canadian seniors (55 years of age and older).
* Non-medical expenditures comprise the majority of debt among bankrupt consumers in both Canada and the United States; the inability to earn sufficient income to cover these costs -- not exposure to uninsured medical costs -- is the real explanation for almost all bankruptcies in either country.
the number one (and only) reason for personal bankruptsies is you CANT PAY YOUR BILLS
1. Filing for bankruptcy isn't cheap, either. According to a study released this month by the National Bureau of Economic Research, the average bankruptcy fees increased from $921 to $1,477 after 2005's BAPCPA was enacted
2. Chapter 7 bankruptcy discharges certain debts, while Chapter 13 may reduce or reorganize debts. However, neither one offers an easy solution
The idea that half of all bankruptcies are caused by medical debt has become part of the common folklore.
The claim, first made in a 2005 Health Affairs article, is at variance with four decades of economic research, including a finding that even large medical bills have no impact on family living standards.
The paper by David Himmelstein, Elizabeth Warren, Deborah Thorne, and Steffie Woolhandler was published as a Health Affairs web exclusive on February 5, 2005. The authors are strong proponents of government run health care.
The data comes from 1,250 personal bankruptcy cases, assumed to be representative of the almost 1.5 million households that filed for bankruptcy in 2001. The data on each bankruptcy were abstracted from court records and supplemented with 931 telephone interviews. The paper's conclusions about illnesses in households were based on medical interviews conducted with 391 people. The paper does not specify how those people were selected. It does say that Himmelstein and Woolhandler (H & W), both MDs, coded the diagnoses given by debtors into the categories used for the analysis.
The classifications used to determine a medical bankruptcy were odd. Only 28.3 percent of the sample cited self-reported illness or injury as a cause of bankruptcy. However, H & W managed to almost double that figure (to 54.5 percent) by counting the following as "illnesses":
•1. A birth or addition of a new family member
•2. A death in a family
•3. A drug or alcohol addiction
•4. Uncontrolled gambling
•5. Loss of at least 2 weeks of work-related income due to illness or injury by anyone in the household
•6. Out-of-pocket medical bills of $1,000 in the two years before filing by anyone in the household
•7. Mortgaging a home to pay medical bills.
In a 2005 article in the Northwestern University Law Review, Prof. Todd J. Zywicki called the $1,000 threshold for contributing medical debt "indefensible." That's an understatement. By H & W criteria, a bankruptcy with $50,000 in student loans and $1,001 in unpaid medical bills would be classified as a "medical bankruptcy." Moreover, the average U.S. household had out-of-pocket expenses of $2,182 in 2001!
In a 2006 review (gated) of the H & W study results in Health Affairs, David Dranove and Michael L. Millenson:
•Recalculate the medical bankruptcy rate using the data given in the H & W paper. They conclude that just 17 percent of the H & W sample "had medical expenditure bankruptcies," although it cannot be stated "with any degree of certainty whether medical spending was the most important cause of bankruptcy."
•Explain that "four decades of studies have addressed the bankruptcy-medical spending connection" and that the results from those studies are much closer to their 17 percent estimate than to the 54.5 percent estimates of H & W.
•Cite a 2002 Fay, Hurst, and White American Economic Review study, which found no statistical link between bankruptcies and health problems.
•Cite a 1999 Domowitz and Sartain Journal of Finance study, which found that high medical debt raised the probability of bankruptcy for the tiny proportion of the population that had high medical debt, but that at the margin, credit cards were the largest single contribution to bankruptcy.
Moreover, Helen Levy in an Economic Research Initiative on the Uninsured working paper estimated the effect of being diagnosed with a serious new health condition, (cancer, diabetes, heart attack, chronic lung disease, or stroke) and found that household consumption "remains smooth" in the face of serious health shocks for both insured and uninsured households.
YET:
A study by the Department of Justice examined more than 5,000 bankruptcy cases between 2000 and 2002. It found that 54% of bankruptcies involve no medical debt, and more than 90% have medical debt of less than $5,000. Even among the minority of bankruptcies that report medical debt, only a few have enough to cause personal bankruptcy.
Next time you copy and paste a dissertation, at least give credit to the source.
Some do and some don't. I would think you'd know that. Some people will end up costing their insurance companies next to nothing and some will cost them a bundle. It's a odds game. What the insurance company tries to do is set the premiums so that they make a profit in spite of the fact some people will get sick and cost them a lot.
Insurance for myself and my dd's is about $8K a year on average for the past 20 years. In that time, $160k in premiums was paid for our coverage. Even with dd's freak accident with a bunk bed ladder ($31K), dd's broken arm ($14k), two births (about $5K each) and dh's three heart attacks ($30K), they're well into the black. Now, someone else developed cancer and cost them hundreds of thouseands of dollars in that same time. The extra premiums that were paid on my behalf (employer paid insurance) went to pay for that. Do you really not know how this works?
Last edited by Ivorytickler; 02-18-2013 at 04:15 PM..
I've done year of homework and research...what have you done ..5 minutes on the internet
oh really..you really think costs will be cut ....I call shenanagins
things are expensive
for example the average hospital uses a lot of electricity...about 400,000 a month...thats 5 million dollars in electric costs yearly.....you are not going to cut that piece of overhead
when you go to the local doctor and pay him/her 100..its not 100 going into their pocket
they have lots of overhead costs:
rent/lease/mortgage
property taxes
electric costs
equipment costs(and many pieces of equipment are not even made here)
cleaning costs
supply costs
personnel costs
etc
right now medicare/medicaid pay VERY LOW reembusment costs to the providers(doctors)...and many doctors are opting out...why because the money they get back doesnt cover their overhead...and the government is VERY SLOW at paying the doctors
320 million overweight people will be quite costly
and let's not forget: Obesity rates among OECD nations increased in recent years, with the highest rate in the U.S. at 34.3% -- which means one in 3 Americans is by definition obese.
number of americans getting cancer (new cases) per year 1.8 million for a total of 19 million people being treated (fighting) each year...each year at least 570,000 die from cancer
number of americans with heart desease: 26.2 million and of those
((Number of visits with heart disease as primary diagnosis: 16 million ))
((Number of discharges with heart disease as first-listed diagnosis: 4.2 million))
number of americans in nursing homes: 2 million
More than 25 million Americans have significant vision loss.
(((hmmm more than 25 million americans are blind or going blind.....that's more than norway,finland, denmark,switzerland,and austria COMBINED TOTAL population....)))
number of americans with diabetes: 26 million
mumber of americans with asthma: 20 million....Each day 11 Americans die from asthma.
while some of those may overlap...look at those numbers 19,26,25,26,20...that's 116 million with MAJOR health problem,,costly problems......we will ALWAYS be the largest spender in the world...we have the 3rd hightest population in the world (next to china and india) and we have more people (total, not a percentage) with major problems than any other country in europe.....I just showed you at least 116 million people with cancer,heart,blindness, diabetes, asthma.......that's more than france and great britian COMBINED for their total populations.
meanwhile ther are 2-4 trillion dollars worth of health CARE costs yearly
the year cost of diabetes is 300 billion...that just one disease in this country
how are you going to control the cost of medical equipment(mri or xray machines, etc)??????most xray machine are made in denmark
how are you going to control the cost of the rising electric bills the doctors/hospitals are facing????
how are you going to control the rising property tax/rent/mortgage that doctors face?????
how are you going to control the cost of supplies(gauze, plaster, silk, rubber, polystirene( a oil product)?????especially some supplies that arent even american
how are you going to control the cost of people salaries???? a maximum wage???
how they are going to control the employment costs for Doctors, nurses, technicians, hospital food operators, hospital linnon cleaning service, custodial services, medical transcribers........are you going to 'nationalize' every profession that is even remotely connected to medicine????
how are they going to control malpractice INSURANCE COSTS?????
dont you get it... medicine (like anyother SERVICE) costs money,,(,money that our government doesnt have)
I asked a simple question.....HOW are you going to control costs OF MEDICINE, not INSURANCE..........because you CANT...and it will get worse and worse as inflation devalues our dollar
Maybe only pharmaceutical companies should be allowed to sell health insurance.
Wouldn't that be a more honest form of fascism?
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
