4 ms·

> You never hear stories of people being utterly bankrupted by a huge hospital bill. Isn’t medical bankruptcy the leading cause of bankruptcy? What are you tal

• anamax 5y ago
  > Isn’t medical bankruptcy the leading cause of bankruptcy? No. People go broke when they get sick because they can't work. Medical bills are the easiest to dodge.
  • damontal 5y ago
    medical bills get sent to collections just like any other bill
    • xwdv 5y ago
      Part of the reason why health insurance is so expensive is that so many simply do not pay their bills. You subsidize all these people with your premiums.
    • ars 5y ago
      And that's where they stay. Nothing happens if you just ignore them.
      • olyjohn 5y ago
        Doesn't that destroy your credit?
        • xwdv 5y ago
          No
          • olyjohn 5y ago
            I think that you are wrong: https://www.experian.com/blogs/ask-experian/medical-debt-and-your-credit-score/ https://www.experian.com/blogs/ask-experian/medical-debt-and... > Medical bills will not affect your credit as long as you pay them. However, medical debt is handled a little differently than other types of consumer debt. Since most health care providers don't report to credit bureaus, your debt would have to be sold to a collection agency before appearing on your credit report. Most medical providers won't sell the debt to a collection agency until you are 60, 90 or even 120 days or more past due. Exactly when that happens depends on your health care provider. Sounds to me like it's still going on your credit report. Just might take a little longer.
        • anamax 5y ago
          Credit ratings are only relevant when you're doing business with businesses that look at credit ratings. Most don't. Large fractions of the US economy run on cash. Debit cards and secured cards don't require a credit rating but allow access to most of the benefits of credit cards.
          • olyjohn 5y ago
            Most obvious thing I've read all day. Credit only matters when your credit is being checked...
            • anamax 5y ago
              The point is that a "destroyed credit rating" only matters if your credit rating matters. For many people, their credit rating is irrelevant. For folks with unpaid medical bills, their credit rating is often in the crapper anyway (because loss of income tends to do that), so unpaid medical bills don't matter.
• marcusverus 5y ago
  The idea that medical bankruptcy is the leading cause of bankruptcy is a carefully engineered fiction. The claim is normally worded something like "2/3 of bankruptcies are caused by medical bills" and includes a reference to an academic study[0], so it sounds super legit! But not only does the study not support the claim--it clearly contradicts the idea that Medicare For All would improve the situation. You're probably rolling your eyes right around now, so I'll dispense with the characterizations and move on to the proof. First of all, here's the actual main takeaway from the study: > 62.1% of all bankruptcies have a medical cause. Huh. "having a medical cause" is far from "caused by medical bills", right?. I wonder what "a medical cause" means? > We included debtors who either (1) cited illness or injury as a specific reason for bankruptcy (27%), or (2) reported uncovered medical bills exceeding $1,000 in the past [two] years (27%), or (3) lost at least two weeks of work-related income because of illness/injury,(27%) or (4) mortgaged a home to pay medical bills. (2%) So if I had a $1000 dollar operation two years ago, paid it off, then filed bankruptcy when my small business tanked last month, mine would be a "Medical bankruptcy". Further down in the article, it gets better: Only 35% of debtors had medical bills >$5000, while 92% of the 62% ("medical bankruptcies") had medical bills >$5000. But the average net worth for "medical bankruptcies" was -$44,000 (negative $44,000), while the average annual income was $31,000. In other words, these are people who, even in the absence of their medical debt, would almost certainly have been filing for bankruptcy anyway. BTW--the median income of one of these bankruptcies, in conjunction with their median household size of 2.79, makes it clear that the vast majority of them were be eligible for Medicaid! Would a rebranding of their state-run healthcare leave them any better off? [0] https://www.amjmed.com/article/S0002-9343(09)00404-5/fulltext https://www.amjmed.com/article/S0002-9343(09)00404-5/fulltex...
  • xwdv 5y ago
    I feel a lot of this should have been obvious to the HN crowd but it seems like they fell for the fiction.
  • haveyoubeen 5y ago
    Why do you think insurance companies are so happy to pay these exorbitant sums to the medical industry? Like what is there motivation? Anyone with a brain can see none of this makes sense. You have planted an entire forest of bullshit above that nobody can verify is true or not. The middle class is being wiped out. Everyone knows this. It's happening from all angles and everyone knows medical bills are one of the main weapons used by the government to do it.