Well, not quite.
Elizabeth Warren has another study out showing that medical expenses contribute to more than half of all bankruptcies--indeed, this time, it's 70%, up from the 50% she found in 2001...
What Warren et. al. neglect to mention is that bankruptcies fell between 2001 and 2007. In fact, they were cut in half. Going by the numbers Warren et. al. provide, medical bankruptcies actually fell by almost 220,000 between 2001 and 2007, a fact that they not only fail to mention, but deliberately obscure.
There's no doubt that medical bills contribute substantially to the debt consumers acquire, but credit card bills and other forms of debt are bigger factors these days. The fact is that Warren and her co-authors have a vested interest in pushing the "medical bills cause most bankruptcies" argument. They want a single payer health care system.
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