According to this article,
http://financiallyfit.yahoo.com/finance/article-110806-6784-1-five-quick-ways-to-bankrupt-yourself?ywaad=ad0035&nc

Reason #2 for bankruptcy in USA is unanticipated medical bills due to illness.

Here’s what the excerpt says on the link:

2. Assuming Insurance Will Cover Your Medical Bills

So, maybe you budget. You make an allowance for food, clothes, beer.

But do you have an allowance for medical costs?

Here’s why you should: The No. 1 cause of bankruptcy is medical bills.

Harvard researchers found that 62 percent of all bankruptcies are caused by medical bills. Even more disturbing: 78 percent of those were people who had insurance.

"Things happen. Surprises happen," Kothari said. "And people don’t prepare for the unexpected. They don’t have a mindset of, ‘How do I prepare myself for the unexpected?’"

Of course, the best medicine is to not get sick.
….

So doesn’t this indicate a serious problem when 78% of people with medical insurance STILL go bankrupt from getting ill? And the amount of out of pocket cost of health insurance has no upper limit?

Do Canadians think this indicates correctly that U.S. healthcare reform by Obama was a step in the right direction?
whoops I didn’t read the statistic correctly.

Among the 62% of Americans whose reason for going bankrupt is due to medical bills, 78% of those are people who had health insurance!
I think we don’t have to do exactly what Canada did under Tommy Douglass, but we should have a Maximum liability that a patient can possibly owe for an illness and start from there….
you can’t budget when you have an unlimited liability for sickness…It’s discouraging because if you are a coal miner, your medical liability may exceed the total of all income earned over your entire life
Now some Americans respond to this by saying "It doesn’t matter how many go bankrupt, doing something to fix this is called ’socialism’, punishing successful corporations to reward people who weren’t successful at budgeting themselves."

But if 78% of 62% of Americans who are bankrupt HAVE insurance! Then isn’t it the system that’s screwed up? Not the result of people being stupid with their money?

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Hi all,

My wife and I have been trying to have a child for over 3 years. While she has been pregnant twice, both experiences were quite traumatic for both of us. Her first pregnancy ended with a miscarriage at 5 months, and the second pregnancy was an ectopic pregnancy which landed her in the emergency room. We both really want a child, especially a child of our own, but I just don’t want to cause any more physical and emotional distress on my wife. We have decided to look at the alternative which is adoption. Primarily we’re only interested in the adoption of a new born. We began to do some research and the cost of an adoption seems staggering! We’re not interested in an international adoption either. I would like to get some feedback from other couples which have successfully adopted a new born. How much did it actually cost you (after the tax credit and any employer adoption benefits). Was it really around K!!

I can understand the attorney fees and medical costs for the birth mother, but k? It also seems that the adoption process is quite complicated (home study, back ground check, family history, etc), I do understand why those things are required, but I would assume those things should be required of ANY couple wanting to have a child, not just adoptive parents.

Anyway, I am really interested to see how much adopting a new born ended up costing you.

Thanks so much for your feedback! Our combined income is around 0K a year, we own two homes (fully paid), so we’re not poor, and though we really want a child, we don’t want to end up declaring bankruptcy to have one.

Thanks so much!

Jason & Mindy
@PIP – If you haven’t adopted or even intend to adopt, you’re not qualified to answer my question, nor am I interested in your opinion. Your "answer" had nothing to do with my question. In the future, I would recommend that you read an individual’s question carefully before answering.
@Toreejon – Much like the other person who "answered" my question. I am sorry that you had a bad experience as an adoptee, but no where in my question do I ask for an adoptee’s opinion. I have friends who are adopted and have no longing for their natural mother and father.
@Sunny – I did not ask for your opinion on adoption. I wanted answers from adoptive parents. The fact that we really want a child of our own, doesn’t take anything away from us completely loving an adopted child. This so called "bond" between child and natural parents is a myth. This bond is developed as the result of the relationship with the child’s parents (i.e. the parents who raised the child). There is absolutely no evidence that suggests there is a "natural" bond between a child and a natural parent if the child was not raised by those parents. As to your point of DNA, it is completely irrelevant. Unless you’re Einstein or Mozart, your DNA is nothing to write home about. I can’t believe you equate adopting a child with that of buying a car. You need some serious help. Adoption is a very unselfish act. We want to adopt not to make up for the "child we might have had" but to rather to share or love and blessings with a child in need. We don’t HAVE to adopt, we want to.

Technorati Tags: 3 years, 5 months, adoption benefits, adoptive parents, attorney fees, back ground check, birth mother, couples, declaring bankruptcy, ectopic pregnancy, emergency room, emotional distress, family history, home study, international adoption, medical costs, mindy, pip, second pregnancy, tax credit

How would you solve our foreign diplomacy problems? Bomb all of our enemies? Do we start nuking Korea, Iran, Iraq, Egypt, Pakistan, Palestine China. Would that solve it? Then what do we do with all those dying people?

How would you solve our financial problems? Let every company now fail, and all the banks fail? GM fail, all housing in foreclosure, and all people on the streets?

How would you solve our health care problems? (One in four bankruptcies is now caused by inability to pay medical costs). Would you just turn away anyone and everyone who is dying if they cannot pay? If they are in a car crash, do we let them die in the wreckage if they cannot show a medical insurance card?

I find lots of you on here are big to criticize, but I find no real alternative solutions.

Take one of these and discuss it.

Technorati Tags: alternative solutions, bankruptcies, banks, bomb, car crash, diplomacy, egypt, enemies, foreclosure, gm, health care problems, insurance card, iran, iraq, korea, medical costs, medical insurance, pakistan, palestine, wreckage

I can understand why people are upset at that part. I think a happy alternative would be that you have to sign a waiver saying that you recognize by not having any insurance you are responsible for all of your personal medical costs. Failure to pay may result in foreclosure or bankruptcy.

What do you think of my alternative?

Technorati Tags: bankruptcy, failure, foreclosure, insurance, medical costs