Medical Bills Cause More Than Half of Bankruptcies

The number of U.S. personal bankruptcies that involved medical bills increased 50 percent in just six years. Sixty-percent of people who filed for bankruptcy had medical bills they could not pay. Of those, more than 75 percent had health insurance but still were overwhelmed by their medical debts.

The study, published in the the American Journal of Medicine, was carried out by researchers at Harvard Law School, Harvard Medical School and Ohio University.

Accroding to the study: "Using a conservative definition, 62.1 percent of all bankruptcies in 2007 were medical; 92 percent of these medical debtors had medical debts over $5,000, or 10 percent of pretax family income... Most medical debtors were well-educated, owned homes and had middle-class occupations."