MEDICAL BILLS PLUNGE MORE FAMILIES INTO DEBT

August 24, 2006

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As the debate over the impact of medical bills on bankruptcy filings continues, it’s clear that many families are shouldering more of their health care costs than ever before, Newsweek reported yesterday. Today, 46 million Americans are uninsured and 53 percent of adults who were uninsured at any time during 2005 reported medical debt or bill problems, according to a Commonwealth Fund Health Insurance survey this spring. One fifth of working-age adults, both insured and uninsured, currently have medical debt they’re paying off over time; and three of five adults with medical bills or debt problems said they were insured at the time the debt was incurred, according to the Commonwealth survey. Part of the issue is that Americans are living longer. The life expectancy for a woman born in 1900 was just 49; for a woman born in 2000, it was 80. “If you died at 40, health care costs were not the same,” said ABI Resident Scholar and University of Pennsylvania law professor David Skeel. “Your biggest medical bills are in your final stages of life.” Medical bankruptcy is a modern-day problem, according to Havard law professor Elizabeth Warren. “Thirty years ago, families didn’t go bankrupt over an illness,” said Warren. “Today people survive illness and accidents that would have killed them a generation ago.” Click here to read the full article.