Abstract

Your Money or Your Life

The article looks at the cost of medical care, and its impact on a patient's personal finances. Since 2000, Harvard associate medical professors Steffie Woolhandler and David Himmelstein, along with Harvard law professor Elizabeth Warren and Ohio University sociology and anthropology professor Deborah Thorne, have been compiling data on bankruptcies in the United States. Their study, published on February 2 by the medical policy journal Health Affairs, found that between 1981 and 2001, medical-related bankruptcies increased by 2,200 percent, an astonishing explosion in a relatively short period of time. In addition, the study uncovered surprising information about the affected population. While poor, uninsured Americans have long been the most obvious victims of a defective healthcare system, it's the middle class that suffers most in this case, accounting for about 90 percent of all medical bankruptcies, says Warren. Whatever happens politically, the fate of medical debtors will also be shaped by several cases now winding through the courts. But even modest measures to protect medical debtors face an increasingly unforgiving environment. And the bankruptcy reform pending in Congress could hurl many more middle-class Americans into lifelong debt.