Medical Debt: A Curable Affliction Health Reform Won’t Fix

"Millions of Americans are deep in medical debt. Unfortunately, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) will throw a lifeline to very few. According to the Congressional Budget Office, even after health reform is fully implemented in 2014, 30 million to 36 million people will remain uninsured. And tens of millions who do have insurance will have coverage that is too limited to ensure financial protection against an expensive illness. Many families will remain just one serious illness away from bankruptcy.

Medical Bankruptcies

In 2001, we began studying medical bankruptcy along with our colleagues Elizabeth Warren and Deborah Thorne. We directly surveyed debtors soon after they’d filed for personal bankruptcy. Back then, illness and medical bills contributed to about 50 percent of all personal bankruptcies and involved about 2.2 million debtors and their dependents.[1]

By 2007, when we repeated our study nationwide, medical bankruptcies had risen to 62 percent.[2] Significantly, most medical debtors were middle class. They had owned homes, had attended college, and had held responsible jobs. Seventy-eight percent even had health insurance, mostly private coverage — at least when they first got sick.

Why are so many middle-class, privately insured Americans swamped by medical costs? The reason is that private coverage has holes — unaffordable deductibles and copayments, as well as brief or nonexistent coverage of medical services like physical therapy. Moreover, since illness often reduces work-related income, families may experience a double whammy, as medical bills arrive just when the paychecks stop..."

http://www.pnhp.org/news/2013/june/medical-debt-a-curable-affliction-health-reform-won%E2%80%99t-fix