ObamaCare and Bankruptcy
 

http://article.images.consumerreport...t3-final-06-17


http://www.consumerreports.org/perso...al-bankruptcy/

Well, well. That's a good thing, right?

Gosh, a law that actually helps millions of individual taxpayers. No wonder the republicans despise it! :rolleyes:

Republicans despise anything that's good and decent.

Correlation without causation. There was NOTHING in 2010, 2011, 2012, or 2013 that was going in with the ACA that would have been a driver for the reduction of bankruptcies. On the other hand, there was a modest economic recovery underway, which was far more likely to account for improving personal finances.

Nice try, though.

And you have no doubt done far more research on the subject than CR. :rolleyes:

I guess that Consumer Reports is now "fake news", how convenient. :rolleyes:

Thanks for the information, Bob.

Inadequate health care has been the cause of bankruptcy far too long.

Medical expenses are the biggest cause of personal bankruptcies in the US. Despite that fact, you believe that a program that helped provide ~20 million people with health insurance had no impact on personal bankruptcies? You Trumpsters are immune to fact and reason.

Yes. Its not that hard Finn. The shared responsibility provisions, the state's elective expansion of Medicaid, and eligibility for subsidized premiums via state and federal health insurance exchanges, didn't occur until 2014. As the graphic clearly shows, bankruptcy numbers were already declining by then. So, while there may be some correlation, the most likely causation is not limited to Obamacare.

So, what did happen around that time that likely had more of an impact? Doesn't take a genius to figure out. The "official" end of the recession was declared in 2009, and employment is lagging indicator of economic recovery. That would make 2011 the first likely year that a noticeable decline in bankruptcies would be recorded.

You said it. I didn't.

We must really like you, then. :rolleyes:

I'm not aware of any studies that have looked at the relationship between medical bankruptcies and the advent of Obamacare. The graph in the OP from Consumer Reports simply counts ALL bankruptcies, not specifically medical bankruptcies, charts the number of total bankruptcies decreasing, and suggests that Obamacare has something to do with it. Hardly a work of scholarly research, IMHO.

On the other hand, there was a study that looked at the rate of MEDICAL BANKRUPTCIES in Massachusetts to determine if Romneycare had might have caused a reduction in MEDICAL bankruptcies. According to that study:

Results
In 2009, illness and medical bills contributed to 52.9% of Massachusetts bankruptcies, versus 59.3% of the bankruptcies in the state in 2007 (P=.44) and 62.1% nationally in 2007 (P<.02). Between 2007 and 2009, total bankruptcy filings in Massachusetts increased 51%, an increase that was somewhat less than the national norm. (The Massachusetts increase was lower than in 54 of the 93 other bankruptcy districts.) Overall, the total number of medical bankruptcies in Massachusetts increased by more than one third during that period. In 2009, 89% of debtors and all their dependents had health insurance at the time of filing, whereas one quarter of bankrupt families had experienced a recent lapse in coverage.

Conclusion
Massachusetts' health reform has not decreased the number of medical bankruptcies, although the medical bankruptcy rate in the state was lower than the national rate both before and after the reform.

Yeah, they probably didn't include Trump's many bankruptcies in the CR study, lol.

Also, here's a tidbit from the NY Times from a year and a half ago, which was two years after the implementation of the shared responsibility provisions of the ACA.

The number of uninsured Americans has fallen by an estimated 15 million since 2013, thanks largely to the Affordable Care Act. But a new survey, the first detailed study of Americans struggling with medical bills, shows that insurance often fails as a safety net. Health plans often require hundreds or thousands of dollars in out-of-pocket payments — sums that can create a cascade of financial troubles for the many households living paycheck to paycheck.

...and this:

In the new poll, conducted by The New York Times and the Kaiser Family Foundation, roughly 20 percent of people under age 65 with health insurance nonetheless reported having problems paying their medical bills over the last year. By comparison, 53 percent of people without insurance said the same.

...and finally this:

These financial vulnerabilities reflect the high costs of health care in the United States, the most expensive place in the world to get sick. They also highlight a substantial shift in the nature of health insurance. Since the late 1990s, insurance plans have begun asking their customers to pay an increasingly greater share of their bills out of pocket though rising deductibles and co-payments. The Affordable Care Act, signed by President Obama in 2010, protected many Americans from very high health costs by requiring insurance plans to be more comprehensive, but at the same time it allowed or even encouraged increases in deductibles.

Now, none of this is particularly great news. But it does underscore the "BS factor" of CR posting a graph attempting to support the idea that Obamacare has somehow fixed the underlying issue with the US health care system, which is COST OF CARE not lack of coverage.

First, CR didn't do a "study". They did a counting exercise. Second, since Trump's last bankruptcy was in 2009, that single bankruptcy was only one of 1.412 million bankruptcies that occurred that year.

You're welcome, Barbara.

It's a shame that math has such a liberal bias, eh? :rolleyes:

Predictable deflection, don't agree with the result, question the math.

I don't dispute their math. I did dispute their premise and their methodology.

I think the BS factor in the CR image you provided has been pretty thoroughly exposed here. I've explained it quite clearly, and even countered CR's "counting exercise" links to research and a NY Times piece which pretty thoroughly puts the lie to CR's little graph.

But hey, Bob, don't let me stand in your way if you want to stand by the BS.

You haven't proven shit, Mike. All you've done is to wave your hands about while bloviating hysterically. I suggest you go read the whole article. :rolleyes:

Wait, don't you mean the "failing NY Times"? And aren't they Fake News? Why would you use them to prove a point?

BTW, did anyone else notice Trump continues to give interviews to the "fake news" outlets, all the while bashing them at rallies for his idiot supporters?

NYT stock price jumped 12% on great earnings today. Hell of a way to fail! :rolleyes:

I did, maybe you should to. The CR article reads like a conclusion in search of facts. On the other hand, you might read the info provided in my earlier post, which includes conclusions provided by folks who have researched this subject.

Indeed!

Doing a topical websearch;

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/a...l-debt/381163/

http://amjmed.org/under-aca-medical-...tcy-continues/

http://www.snopes.com/643000-bankrup...medical-bills/

You do realize that bankruptcies due to medical expenses are unheard of in most civilized countries.:rolleyes:

The flaw with that comment Merrylander is the United States is not a civilized country by any means.

You're comparing apples to oranges.

I think it's the system. Most gainfully employed people, those working for unions and most importantly government employees at every level are provided healthcare by their employers as a no-tax benefit.

So people having to buy healthcare (or go without one) are in the minority. Besides the people in Congress are not facing this situation since they get very generous health benefits, more like give themselves what they want.

I've had enough of this idiocy too. The left loves to walk around saying things like:

Inability to pay medical bills is the number one cause of personal bankruptcy in America!

Or, like the article Finn linked to: One in five American adults will struggle to pay medical bills this year. The source of Finn's info was that well - respected medical cost research firm "Nerdwallet". :rolleyes:

Here's one study that that left loves to cite when throwing around the top-line stat about medical bankruptcies in the US: Using a conservative definition, 62.1% of all bankruptcies in 2007 were medical...

What these studies fair to parse between are whether or not the individual was forced to stop working when due to their illness, which of course would have been a significant factor in bankruptcy proceedings.

In fact, inability to pay due to loss of income is the most likely scenario for the numbers reported in these studies. According to "Nerdwallet": Despite having year-round insurance coverage, 10M insured Americans ages 19-64 will face bills they are unable to pay. According to the AMJ study: We designated bankruptcies as “medical” based on debtors’ stated reasons for filing, income loss due to illness, and the magnitude of their medical debts.

So, the assumption that these folks were uninsured or had no access to health insurance and that was the cause of their bankruptcy is BULL SHIT!!

Now that we've got an apples to apples comparison of medical bankruptcies that include loss of income, and using your definition of "civilized countries", apparently Canada is not civilized! In Canada, depending on which list you look at, Canada DOES have bankruptcies due to medical, and its either the top 3 or top 4 reason that folks in Canada file for bankruptcy.

http://www.creditcards.ca/credit-car...krupt-1265.php

https://bankruptcy-canada.com/bankru...of-bankruptcy/

Glad to be here to debunk the fake news BS that some of you love to throw around.

The GOP members of the House were asked to vote for this latest version of healthcare act bereft of details and cost for the good of the party. Trump is now claiming this as a great victory? Question is who loses?

You missed he bit in one of your links

"Medical problems cause a significant percentage of bankruptcies, although it's unclear whether medical bills or the inability to earn sufficient income due to poor health is the true root cause."

As to BS since you are an expert in that department we will have to take your word for it.

Mind you not all drug treatments in Canada are covered Frex that cancer drug used to treat wet AMD was not covered I know as my late sister suffered from it and they did not cover it at first until there was enough evidence of its efficacy accumulated.

But it still beats what we have here by a country mile. Drug prices are close to one half of what we pay here.

Almost any Republican running in close districts with any luck, Maryland may even be lucky to get rid of that idiot Andy Harris.

Name brand drugs, yes. Generics, not so much. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3999558/

The point is, we're not a civilized country. We have a predatory health care system that preys on the sick for obscene profits, a predatory educational system designed to put students in lifetime debt, indeed our entire capitalist system which is supposed to "foster competition" only destroys competition; you can drive across this nation and find the same exact hand full of chain stores and restaurants with the same exact products in every city nationwide.... and not much else, we murder each other by the tens of thousands every year, black people are on police hit lists across the country, we treat hispanics like lepers and Muslims even worse, our political system is corrupt as the day is long and we don't seem to give a fuck, we're greedy beyond comprehension, and we're as hateful and ugly as a nation gets.

And that's not even touching our history of genocide and slavery.

We are not a civilized nation.

You didn't take your meds this week?

You can pretend this isn't what our country is if you want. Lot's of people refuse to face it. Lots of people live in their own fantasy world we're we're number one YAY! Go ahead, get your confederate flag and fly it off the back of your truck if it makes you feel more manly...more patriotic.

If you'd open your eyes you'd see exactly where this country is goose marching towards.

Fact on ones views changing event, a cancer diagnoses. Just how fast the ACA becomes relished! I have seen this first hand with one of my TP repub family members.
Now they are afraid of what will happen if it goes away, will they loose their home? Upset because they can't work, can't get unemployment, no help financially, and don't understand why! Of course were Obama haters and staunch union bashes!

They have assets and are afraid of loosing them now! All it takes is one bad diagnoses and the world looks totally different.



Barney

Dondillion will be so glad to see this latest effort at sharing information.

Healthcare is like money, you will only truly appreciate money till you don't have it. Trump supporters who are celebrating the death of Obamacare will not appreciate the need for a govt. regulated and subsidized healthcare plan till they need it. I do not believe that people in the bottom 90% of the economic scale can pay for a single major medical treatment.

Yet these demented red staters vote with their brains than their pocketbooks. Not, just stupid. Look at Kansas?

Vote with their brains? The instinctive, tribal parts maybe, not the logical parts.....

Mike had I taken Florence to Canada I do not doubt but what she would be alive today. So take your healthcare system and shove it.