[cactus2093]

While there are definitely some horror stories about this in the US, it is a lot less common than people think. It turns out only about 4% of bankruptcies for adults are due to a hospitalization[0]. So you're much more likely to go bankrupt for other reasons.

[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5865642/

[ianleeclark]

That's not what the study is saying. They're not disputing the fact that bankruptcies are largely caused by healthcare-related costs. What this study says is that being admitted to a hospital only has a 4% chance of causing a bankruptcy.

The other thing I'd like to point out is that their sample set is entirely from California which is materially different from many other states in the US, so it's possible the 4% rate varies state-to-state.

[kasperni]

[1] puts medical issues as the top contributing factor for bankruptcies in the US at 67%.

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/11/this-is-the-real-reason-most...

[TMWNN]

Your citation says

>A new study from academic researchers found that 66.5 percent of all bankruptcies were tied to medical issues —either because of high costs for care or time out of work.

(My emphasis.) In other words, people going bankrupt because health problems = lack of work = lack of income. That does not contradict the fact that only 4% of US bankruptcies are because of medical bills (https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2018/0... that is, bills for health care treatment exceeding available income.

Your article goes on to quote a study author who carefully elides the difference between the two. Oh, by the way, he is a prominent proponent of Medicare for All! Imagine that.

[standardUser]

Bankruptcy is just the worst case scenario. How many more families face serious financial harm, but fall short of declaring bankruptcy?

[cactus2093]

Probably a lot? But it's honestly kind of hard to say and I have seen very conflicting data (such as the 4% vs 60% discrepancy in what percentage of bankruptcies are caused by medical bills). I do agree healthcare in the US is thoroughly terrible, even if for no other reason than exactly this uncertainty. If you go to the hospital or have some type of procedure done, you could be out a few hundred dollars or a few tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of dollars and there's really no way to know before you go in.

And my anecdotal experience only muddies my understanding even more. Things have always worked out pretty well for me. Even the time I got a $45,000 bill because the surgeon was covered by my insurance but the anesthesiologist was not, somehow in the end after a few phone calls to the billing department my portion was lowered to just an extra $400 on top of the expected copay. I have no clue how any of it works, but these insane numbers seem to often just go away as mysteriously as they appeared. I don't personally know anyone who has actually had to pay the absurd amounts of money that get quoted, it's like it's all some kind of fake money. (I do realize that I am probably in a very privileged bubble, most people I know are at least not uninsured for instance).