The American Journal of Medicine Blog

As recently as 1981, only 8 percent of families filing for bankruptcy cited medical reasons. By 2010, when the Affordable Care Act was passed, medical bankruptcy was all-to-common. A 2009 study by Himmelstein et al, published in The American Journal of Medicine, revealed that 62.1% of all bankruptcies had a medical cause. Telephone interviews identified 639 […]

Ryan’s Medicare Overhaul: Would it increase the rate of medical bankruptcy? Blog Commentary With no Democratic support, the US House of Representatives passed Rep. Paul Ryan’s much-ballyhoo’d 2012 budget proposal on Friday, April 15, 2011. Rather than go into great detail regarding Ryan’s Path to Prosperity, I’m going to focus on one piece that could be […]

Health insurance coverage rates for Massachusetts debtors were higher in 2009 than in 2007 (89.0% vs 84.1%) and significantly higher than the national average in 2007 (89.0% vs 69.7%). Despite broad insurance coverage in Massachusetts after reform, bankruptcy filings due to medical costs did not decrease significantly between 2007 and 2009. There is a web […]

The March 2011 issue of The American Journal of Medicine will have a collection of articles focusing on healthcare reform–including new research from the Harvard team that published the seminal article on the link between bankruptcy and medical bills. For a preview of AJM’s March issue, check out Dr. Joseph Alpert’s video, above. Featured diagnostic […]

In 2001 in 5 states sampled, it was found that medical problems contributed to at least 46.2% of all bankruptcies. Since then, health costs and the numbers of un- and underinsured have increased, and bankruptcy laws have tightened. Despite these factors, medical related bankruptcy increased to 62.1% of all bankruptcies in 2007. Illness and medical […]

The article by Himmelstein et al in the August 2009 issue of the The American Journal of Medicine documents that health care expenses were the most common cause of bankruptcy in the United States in 2007, accounting for 62% of US bankruptcies compared with 8% in 1981. Most bankruptcies occurred in middle-class citizens with health […]