Medical Bills Account for only 17% of Bankruptcies

March 06, 2006 David Goch, Washington Legislative Counsel Commercial Law League of America A study entitled: Medical Bankruptcy: Myth Versus Fact, released last week on the website maintained by Health Affairs, a health policy journal, refutes previous findings that medical debt contributes to a majority of personal bankruptcies. The study said medical debt is a contributing factor in 17 percent of personal bankruptcies. The study was in response to the February 2005 study, 'Illness and Injury as Contributors to Bankruptcy,' by David Himmelstein of Harvard Medical School, along with Elizabeth Warren, Deborah Thorne and Steffie Woolhandler, that also appeared on the Health Affairs Website, which concluded that medical debt contributes to 54.5 percent of personal bankruptcies.