Health-Related Debt and Bankruptcy

Here's a disturbing story. It states that medical bills contribute to 60% of declared bankruptcies in 2007. It's a scary trend.

Wanna know what's even scarier?

Of those bankruptcies, 75% had health insurance, but the bills still overwhelmed them.

This isn't saying that the medical bills alone were the cause of the bankruptcy but they significantly contributed to the problem.

There are other scary findings in the study; things like the number of insurance companies that drop clients right after one disabling health problem because they're too expensive (one quarter of insurers), and even more within a year (another quarter).

It's sad...I'll never be able to think of those $10 Tylenol pills I received during my stay in the hospital and not think about how overpriced medical care is. I always sit and wonder about what kind of braintrust came up with the game where hospitals charge three times more for various services knowing that your insurance company will only pay a fraction of the bill, giving hospitals more reason to exaggerate their bills even more in some kind of brainless monetary arms race. It's ridiculous and absurd and frankly I'd like to think if it weren't for the powerful lobbies people would be angry enough to have done something about such a situation.

Maybe we should contact our representatives who are supposedly in Washington working for us to let them know how absurd this is...