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?

Technorati Tags: bankruptcies, best medicine, canadians, coal miner, harvard researchers, health insurance, healthcare reform, insurance quot, kothari, maximum liability, medical bills, medical costs, medical insurance, medical liability, mindset, reason 2, socialism, statistic, step in the right direction, unlimited liability

Now I know most European countries like Greece, the UK, Belgium, Italy, Germany etc. are all about high taxes and spending money on programs that are very socialist in nature. This is fine if everyone in the country is down for it, and will pay for it, but the thing is most people don’t want to pay for it and so a lot of these countries have debt loads that are like more than 100% of their GDP sometimes in the 2s and 3s depending on the metric, or their bankrupt apparently (i.e. Greece). Those big spending european socialist countries are all like way up there compared to the rest of the world in debt, they make the U.S. look pretty efficient spenders in fact. I don’t think countries like Sweeden or Denmark are any different from the rest of western Europe as far as socialist spending priorities are concerned, but they seem to carry a far lower debt load, lower than the United States in fact. How do they do it? Is it because they spend basically nothing on defense (because who the hell is going to attack Sweden? The Pittsburgh Penguins?) Have they figured out a way to get people to pay for socialist programs that put a disincentive on them to make enough money to fork over the money necessary to do that? Do people just make a lot of money there anyway, and there aren’t as many poor people leeching off the system in comparison? Really, what are the Scandinavians doing that the rest of the world can learn? I’m not dissing socialism here, this is an honest question, because they might be on to something.

Technorati Tags: 2s, 3s, bankrupt, debt load, debt loads, enough money, european countries, gdp, honest question, penguins, pittsburgh penguins, priorities, rest of the world, scandinavians, socialism, socialist countries, spenders, spending money, sweeden, western europe

True, America has given the world more in terms of scientific advancements, military protection, etc., but what about day-to-day life? They don’t have job lock because their insurance isn’t tied to employment, they have freedom of speech, assembly and religion…and, yes, you can own a firearm in Australia —-look it up instead of listening to propaganda! They have a high per-capita income also and a reasonable tax rate, no one goes bankrupt over medical problems….so why do so many Americans say that their country is the greatest on Earth when Australia appears to be a pretty great place as well? Some could argue that it’s actually greater.
So, Australia is not the centre of the English-speaking world and they don’t have the bread basket that America has, what good are those two things if you’re not doing well in America? So what if Australia isn’t the centre and doesn’t have a fertile interior….we’re talking about day-to-day life of an Aussie versus a Yank, and from what I am reading, it sounds like the average Aussie has it better these days. Flame away with ignorant comments about the "poverty, fascism, illiteracy, violence and socialism" of this foreign land and how much they suffer and all want to immigrate to America. Australia’s great.

Technorati Tags: aussie, australia, bread basket, earth, fascism, freedom of speech, illiteracy, insurance, job, medical problems, military protection, per capita income, poverty, propaganda, religion, scientific advancements, socialism, tax rate, violence, yank

It doesn’t mean they’d go away – they’d just be restructured, hopelfully without the union control that is the cause of their failure – a microcosm of socialism. The big 3 are thriving in other countries, but because of decades of liberal union control, not only are the companies in trouble, but so is the whole state of Michigan. Should the unions be eliminated, like Reagan did with Air Traffic Controllers for the public safety, for the good of the country and Michigan jobs?

Technorati Tags: air traffic controllers, decades, failure, jobs, microcosm, public safety, reagan, socialism, state of michigan, unions