There appears to be quite the back and forth on both sides of the issue though I'm surprised that there hasn't been follow up studies that I can find.
Here is Dranove's Op-Ed in the Washington Times critiquing Warren's report that had the 54% of bankruptcies claim: http://washingtontimes.com/news/2007/jul/26/junk-social-science-index/ Here is Warren's rebuttal of the Op-Ed: http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2007/07/26/denying_the_truth_about_medica/ And another critique of Dranove's Op-Ed: http://www.creditslips.org/creditslips/2007/07/junk-opinions.html And even if 17% of bankruptcies in 2001 were caused by medical bills, there were 1,492,129 bankruptcy filings in 2001 according to http://www.uscourts.gov/bnkrpctystats/statistics.htm which would mean 253,662 filings due to medical bills. That would average out to 1 every 124 seconds based on 31,556,926 seconds in a year (2001 not being a leap year). I'd say that one bankruptcy filing every 2 minutes due to medical bills is absolutely horrible, wouldn't you? And considering that health care costs have continue to outpace wage growth substantially every year since 2001, I'd argue that the liklihood is that the statistics are much worse now. Worse case scenario, the "every 30 seconds" should be revised to "every 2 minutes". That is if Dranove's critiques are valid. Regardless, I don't think that it represents any important mischaracterization of the data. From a policy and political perspective, the conclusion is the same regardless of interpretation of the data. This is just more FUD. Judah On Thu, Mar 5, 2009 at 9:06 PM, Robert Munn <[email protected]> wrote: > > President Obamas kicking off his health care reform today in the worst > possible way: with a mischaracterization of data. > > The cost of health care now causes a bankruptcy in America every thirty > seconds," Obama said at the opening of his White House forum on health care > reform. The problem: That claim, based on a 2001 survey, is simply > unsupportable. > > The figure comes from a 2005 Harvard University > study<http://content.healthaffairs.org/cgi/reprint/hlthaff.w5.63v1.pdf>saying > that 54 percent of bankruptcies in 2001 were caused by health > expenses. We reviewed it internally and knocked it down at the time; an > academic reviewer did the same in 2006. Recalculating Harvards own data, he > came up with a far lower figure 17 percent. > > A more recent study <http://www.hschange.com/CONTENT/1017/>by another group, > approaching it another way, indicates that in 2007 about eight-tenths of one > percent of Americans lived in families that filed for bankruptcy as a result > of medical costs. That rings a little less loudly than one every 30 > seconds. > > ... > > more on the site > > http://blogs.abcnews.com/thenumbers/2009/03/medical-bankrup. > > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Adobe® ColdFusion® 8 software 8 is the most important and dramatic release to date Get the Free Trial http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;207172674;29440083;f Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/message.cfm/messageid:290798 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=11502.10531.5
