Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Study Finds Illness, Medical Bills Root Cause of Majority Of U.S. Bankruptcies




Posted By: Robert Katz

By: S. L. Baker

(NaturalNews) Unemployment is high and retirement accounts have virtually disappeared for many folks in the wake of the current recession. Housing prices have plummeted, too. So it comes as no surprise that data just released by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts shows the total number of U.S. bankruptcies filed during the first three months of 2009 increased 34.5 percent over the same period in 2008. But what is surprising is a new Harvard study published in the August 2009 issue of The American Journal of Medicine which reveals financial woes starting hitting Americans even before the officially recognized economic downturn -- and the main culprit was illness and medical bills.

The results of the first-ever national random-sample survey of bankruptcy filers, conducted by researchers at Cambridge Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Harvard Law School and Ohio University, show that in 2007, 60% of all bankruptcies in the United States were driven by sickness and related medical bills. Moreover, the share of bankruptcies attributable to medical woes over the past few years has been on the upswing.

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