Ha! I Was Right!

In reference to this post:

http://politicsgunsredmeat.blogspot.com/2009/02/obama-proposes-634-billion-fund-for.html

Health-care costs are "one of the major reasons why small businesses close their doors and corporations ship jobs overseas," Obama said in a speech to Congress on Tuesday night."This is a cost that now causes a bankruptcy in America every 30 seconds. By the end of the year, it could cause 1.5 million Americans to lose their homes," he said. ". . . Given these facts, we can no longer afford to put health-care reform on hold."

I said:

Show me the study or report that says states this! Not the number of bankruptcies, but that they are because of health care costs?

Well........

http://blogs.abcnews.com/thenumbers/2009/03/medical-bankrup.html


Medical Bankruptcies: A Data-Check

“The cost of health care now causes a bankruptcy in America every thirty seconds," Obama said at the opening of his White House forum on health care reform. The problem: That claim, based on a 2001 survey, is simply unsupportable.


The figure comes from a 2005 Harvard University study saying that 54 percent of bankruptcies in 2001 were caused by health expenses. We reviewed it internally and knocked it down at the time; an academic reviewer did the same in 2006. Recalculating Harvard’s own data, he came up with a far lower figure – 17 percent.

A good part of the problem is definitional. The Harvard report claims to measure the extent to which medical costs are “the cause” of bankruptcies. In reality its survey asked if these costs were “a reason” – potentially one of many – for such bankruptcies.

Beyond those who gave medical costs as “a reason,” the Harvard researchers chose to add in any bankruptcy filers who had at least $1,000 in unreimbursed medical expenses in the previous two years. Given deductibles and copays, that’s a heck of a lot of people.

Moreover, Harvard’s definition of “medical” expenses includes situations that aren’t necessarily medical in common parlance, e.g., a gambling problem, or the death of a family member. If your main wage-earning spouse gets hit by a bus and dies, and you have to file, that’s included as a “medical bankruptcy.”