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As much as you see over health insurance
Posted on: January 29, 2019 at 10:19:23 CT
Spanky KU
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If you have a half-million-dollar house, three cars, a boat — and also a heart attack — which of these things “caused” your bankruptcy?
The fraction of bankruptcies caused by medical events is just 4%. And even among those bankruptcies, it seems that medical bills may be less of a problem than the other things associated with an illness, such as lost labor income.
If medical bills really were driving so many people into bankruptcy, then we would have expected filings to plummet after 2013, when millions of people gained health insurance coverage. Instead we see a smooth decline from the recession-era peak.
In other words: Medical bankruptcy probably wasn’t nearly as big a problem as people thought when we were passing our giant new health-care program. And to the extent that it was a problem, Obamacare probably didn’t do much to fix it.
Even among the uninsured, hospitalization accounted for only 6% of total bankruptcies. Why is that important? Because if people with no insurance at all don’t have significantly higher rates of bankruptcy, it suggests that while medical bills are driving some bankruptcies, they’re unlikely to be causing the majority.
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1716604
The fraction of bankruptcies caused by medical events is just 4%. And even among those bankruptcies, it seems that medical bills may be less of a problem than the other things associated with an illness, such as lost labor income.
If medical bills really were driving so many people into bankruptcy, then we would have expected filings to plummet after 2013, when millions of people gained health insurance coverage. Instead we see a smooth decline from the recession-era peak.
In other words: Medical bankruptcy probably wasn’t nearly as big a problem as people thought when we were passing our giant new health-care program. And to the extent that it was a problem, Obamacare probably didn’t do much to fix it.
Even among the uninsured, hospitalization accounted for only 6% of total bankruptcies. Why is that important? Because if people with no insurance at all don’t have significantly higher rates of bankruptcy, it suggests that while medical bills are driving some bankruptcies, they’re unlikely to be causing the majority.
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1716604
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As much as you see over health insurance - Spanky KU - 1/29 10:19:23