Medical bills behind 60% of US personal bankruptcies

More than 75% of these bankrupt families had health insurance but still were overwhelmed by their medical debts, the team at Harvard Law School, Harvard Medical School and Ohio University reported in the American Journal of Medicine.

“Using a conservative definition, 62,1% of all bankruptcies in 2007 were medical; 92% of these medical debtors had medical debts of more than 5000, or 10% of pretax family income,” the researchers wrote.

“Most medical debtors were well-educated, owned homes and had middle-class occupations,” they said.

The researchers, whose work was paid for by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, said the share of bankruptcies that could be blamed on medical problems rose by 50% from 2001 to 2007.

“Unless you’re Warren Buffett, your family is just one serious illness away from bankruptcy,” Harvard’s David Himmelstein, an advocate for a single-payer health insurance programme for the US, said in a statement. Reuters