Medical bill-driven bankruptcies
WC is indulging his penchant for irony, of course. We’ve known since the seminal 2005 studies by then-Professor Elizabeth Warren and her colleagues that the largest single reason Americans file bankruptcy is medical bills. The paper has since been attacked – often by researchers funded by the health insurance industry – but WC’s personal observations, representing a bankruptcy trustee for more than a decade, support Warren’s conclusions.
A recent study analyzed the economic impact of one class of illnesses, cancer, on American families. The authors found 42.4% of individuals depleted their life assets within the two years immediately following the cancer diagnoses. 38.2% incurred longer-term insolvency; i.e., filed bankruptcy.
Cancer treatment is debilitating, often making it difficult or impossible for the patient to work. The medicines involved are outrageously expensive. The courses of treatment are long and arduous. The cumulative costs burn through health insurance policy limits, Medicare medication allowances, home equity and retirement savings and still medical bills remain unpaid.
What kind of a warped, sick society forces more than a third of cancer patients into bankruptcy? Isn’t having cancer bad enough? Do we have to wreck the finances as well as the lives of cancer patients?
Is that really the American Way?
Wickersham's Conscience 
Because of the high costs of cancer treatments I have already decided that should I get cancer I will refuse treatment. If cancer kills me, so be it.
LikeLike
A profoundly sad, but understandable choice. It’s appalling that so many Americans accept it as “normal.”
/WC
LikeLike