...when they become severely injured or seriously ill is explained here:

http://open.salon.com/blog/kanuk/2009/05/15/lets_compare_public_and_private_health_care_costs_eh

Those reflect out-of-pocket costs for a hypothetical hospital visit.

lightly disguised by fast food and ipods.

But from what I have seen and heard, the tightening credit markets have shut down the practice of shifting balances from card to card, forcing people to actually start making payments. These folks then enter bankruptcy to try to discharge unsecured debts hoping to salvage enough take-home pay to make their house payment (since home mortgages can't be stripped down). Others do so just to stall a home foreclosure, well aware that it only buys them a limited amount of time.

Someone with a long term illness may not be able to work. Unemployment and long-term disability cover, at best, 75% of a person's income. How long would most people hang on with only 75% of their income?

Further, having had a child in the hospital for nearly two weeks, in England, where it was 100% covered by the NHS, there are large numbers of incidentals. I stayed with my badly hurt, very scared, miserable toddler. My husband had to leave work early to care for my daughter after school, to visit us in the specialist hospital was a good hour's drive (with gas at over 5$/gallon) . He couldn't visit us and go home and cooK and get my daughter in bed on time, so they went to restaurants. The incidental costs added up. Had I been ill and out of commission for longer, issues like paying for a cleaner, and after school baby-sitting would have become necessary.

Anyone stuck in a hospital for weeks with a miserable kid knows that you need support, support, support. My son and I needed the visits to get through.

I've been long aware that most professionals are only a bit of bad luck and bad health away from financial catastrophe.

But all that being said, how much of the bankruptcies are people whose medical costs are killing them, or people whose bad health prevents them from earning their usual income? My assumption is that both those things are an issue.

Greetings from a 40 year crohnie

Hospital is horendously expensive and medicine costs are huge withg any lomg term illness but also keep in mind that Short term Disability only lasts 6 months 180 days of disablity money then you must seek Social Security Disability umm good luck with that one

So yeah bankruptcy will loom roughly 6 minths after onset of your illness with that very best plan sooner more likely

SocSec is taking roughly 600 days and a couple appeals to make it to a check...

Its a fricken sin that this country so hateful that it treats the sick so shabbily, if there is indeed a god he will punish you for your utter disregard for his teaching

Look forward to that you hypocrite HMO bastards

this will have a profound effect on the economy.

sick and scared people don´t spend a lot of money, and they try to avoid risk. This will not help a recovery.

...that it is not only the sick that can be on the hook.

My mom (god rest her soul) had Medicare and a stroke. She lingered for 6 weeks at a stroke specialty center before succumbing to a heart attack leaving well over 100K unpaid.

Then the hospital started sending me, and my sister bills and phone calls. I was warned by our lawyer never to respond to any of these as that will be construed as accepting responsibility for payment and then you are on the hook for the 100K.

I don't know about you, but I do not have a 100K laying around collecting dust.

So even if you are just standing in the same room and they get your name--you can be ruined.

It is a sick system that our wonderful nation has enshrined for those without.

The high costs that the "Big 3" have had to shoulder are also in part due to higher insurance rates for workers. Compare that to an auto manufacturing company like Japan- where health care is a human right and covered in a national plan.

This news is unsurprising but still sickening. What better evidence do the "powers that be" need that our healthcare system in this country is an absolute disgrace? I am sick and tired of the insurance executives and our greedy politicians getting rich off of the suffering and death of millions.

SINGLE PAYER NOW!

Sorry, didn't you get the memo?

Single payer is 'off the table'-

off the congressional table, off the senate table, off the table in the oval office.

It would be 'too disruptive.'*

*Realistic health-care for Americans would be 'too disruptive' to the business model of the health-care/insurance industry. Can't have that.

The connection between sickness and the economic failure of families and households has been long established in the USA. Bankruptcy primarily affects middle class and UMC families with credit, debts, motgages, etc. For us poorer folks a spell of illness means not being able to work for minimum wage, not eating, missing school, losing a job, or even not making the rent and going back to the shelter. We all are affected by America's wasteful, profit-driven, swiss-cheese medical care.

When will the "Great Beast"--the AMerican people-- wake up? We are on the brink of getting a health care program that brings an end to one of the most stupid and wasteful mistakes we have ever made as a Nation (right after [almost] electing Bush and Cheney twice) i.e. making "living a thing that money can buy." And folks are not talking about it...not even in doctors' offices and hospitals. LET'S WAKE UP!

Where are the people of this country? Where are our voices? It is time to ask your representatives in the Congress, your Senators, and your President for what you need for your family to keep them HEALTHY, not just out of bankruptcy. It is time to talk, think aloud, and YELL out loud.

We do not need more complex hard-to-understand fine-print from the insurance companies. We need simple, readily-available free CARE from local doctors, nurses, dentists, to keep us all healthy. Making available prevention, early detection and easy access before disease gets advanced will actually save money. It will keep us healthy.

PLEASE, LET'S DEMAND IT!