Medical Bankruptcy and the Opportunity Issue Revisited
washingtonpost.com: Sick and Broke
Another wonderful little op/ed writeup that validates another little bit of my worldview. Elizabeth Warren writes of a Harvard study on medical bankruptcy - basically looking at case of families and individuals bankrupted by a medical emergency.
The findings?
The victims of this - a million or so last year - were surprisingly middle class, often had some form of health coverage, were well educated, had responsible jobs ... but were still undone financially when illness struck.
I'm noting a Google search is in order for the full findings, but here's the quick hits:
Warren advocates that "[c]omprehensive health insurance is the only real solution." The stereotypes abound here and I'm resisting the urge to pigeonhole this as a call for a single-payer plan before digging deeper. As one who does tend to disagree with that approach, however, I do agree that a vastly different approach is needed. Of course, I'm also curious how this study's prescription meshes with the Michael Porter model of competitive industry reform in health care. A fuller comparison of that may have to wait for that book to make it to the book stores, however.
ADD-ON: The findings are available at HealthAffairs.org.