No kidding; after months and months dealing with the actual mechanics of the medical bills for a simple leg contusion (stupidly thought it was broken; won't do

No kidding; after months and months dealing with the actual mechanics of the medical bills for a simple leg contusion (stupidly thought it was broken; won't do that again), if the big C ever hits, I think we're headed to Mexico to avoid bankruptcy of both time and money. Just dealing with the afteraffects of a simple ER trip for what turned out to be a bruise was eye-opening. I had the pleasure of dealing with a multitude of bills from random places (in some cases, lawyers' offices, who handle some doctor's bills from first charge--i.e., not collections--and boast on their web sites about being able to return "200% of what's owed"), determining what's legit and what's fraudulent, the paperwork sent back and forth between us and our insurance company and between the billers and our insurance company (who weren't paying anyway because we have a very high deductible, but you have to jump through massive hoops to get them to actually count your payments towards the deductible), the attempts of the medical billers to double-bill and continue to appeal the bill with two insurance companies months after I paid the bill (how they collect that 200%, I assume)...a total mess. Someone got paid 2k for a deep contusion, but I think most went to middle(wo)men and lawyers' offices. That 62% medical bankruptcies in 2007 in the US are actually insured persons (cite: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/documents/american_journal_of_medicine_09.pdf http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/documents/amer...) is no surprise; what would surprise me is if it isn't 20%+ higher now.