If you were planning on breaking both your legs, replacing a kidney, or having a couple-three rounds of brain surgery for fun this summer, you might want to rethink things.
Insurmountable medical bills were a factor in 62 percent of bankruptcies last year (meaning 2007). This according to a study in the American Journal of Medicine.
Well, we gotta start gettin some health insurance to these poor saps, then, huh? Well... 75 percent of the newly bankrupt actually HAD medical coverage.
Oh.
And here I was thinking that layoffs and the recessionaryismentation-ness of the economy were to blame. And all the suckers who bought $800,000 homes on $40k jobs. For sure, those things play their role, but it's the medical bills that push people over the edge, it appears.
The data is for 2007, as I said. Which leads some to conclude that the 2008 numbers will be even more striking.
Possibly, health care reform is the biggest challenge we face today. Bigger than terrorism... bigger than Social Security's coming insolvency, bigger than climate change, even. (All that's going to do is displace a billion people and de-stabilize the poor countries of the world and raise sea levels and mess with the food supply. OK, so maybe they're tied.)
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