Quote:
Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
I hope you're also capable of avoiding major medical problems. Because notwithstanding the suggestion that bankruptcy is all about people who spend too much with their credit cards, more than half of bankruptcies follow medical emergencies.
- In 2001, 1.458 million American families filed for bankruptcy. To investigate medical contributors to bankruptcy, we surveyed 1,771 personal bankruptcy filers in five federal courts and subsequently completed in-depth interviews with 931 of them. About half cited medical causes, which indicates that 1.9–2.2 million Americans (filers plus dependents) experienced medical bankruptcy. Among those whose illnesses led to bankruptcy, out-of-pocket costs averaged $11,854 since the start of illness; 75.7 percent had insurance at the onset of illness. Medical debtors were 42 percent more likely than other debtors to experience lapses in coverage. Even middle-class insured families often fall prey to financial catastrophe when sick.
That's the abstract of this study. But fuck 'em, right?
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He has health insurance -- and even a $5,000 stop-loss wouldn't really inconvenience him (unlike, say, someone who makes $30,000 or even $50,000 a year). Unless he got really, really sick and couldn't work, and Unum cut off his disability payments after a couple years. But no one ever thinks they will get disabled.
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