According to a
report in the American Journal of Medicine, medical bills are behind 60 percent of bankruptcies. Of those groups, three quarters had health insurance.
Now some will try to use this as political fodder for their agenda, but there are several factors at play here:
- America is the most obese country - over 30% by some measures which is a full 6 percentage points above the second place contestant: Mexico.
- Given our obesity, it is not a stretch to say many live unhealthy lives leading to medical conditions that are easily prevented. Preventable diseases kill far more people than other causes.
- Bankruptcy is not a completely accurate measure of inability to pay. Although there are times bankruptcy makes since, it can't be used as a measure of fiscal soundness since causes and situations are uncertain. It does, however, show reason for concern.
- As Americans we demand the best care, and hospitals are leery of not covering every little aspect of medical care, no matter how insignificant for fear of a lawsuit. This in addition to other factors makes our health care more expensive than any other country and yet we rank 37th for health care.
Overall, I think there are families that are legitimately hurting out there, but I don't think this is true of the entire sixty percent or possibly even half. We live an extravagant lifestyle where we buy when we want to buy and eat what we want to eat and expect our doctors to fix it all so we can spend a few more years in front of the
TV.
Is the health care system in need of some changes? Absolutely. But we can't just expect that paying less or having someone else paying for it is going to fix it. We are going to have to work on prevention by exercising and eating right. We are going to have to
spend our money wisely, save up and have an emergency fund for... well, emergencies! Have we not learned about just spending money with wild abandon from this
recent financial crisis? The poorest 25% of the US
has gone from overspending their income by 12 percent in 1960 to overspending by 95 percent in 2004.
There are legitimately people out there who either didn't have the income despite the expense, had too great an expense, or had a non-preventable medical condition. For those people I am truly sorry and I hope that we can modify our health care system appropriately to accommodate them. For those that fall outside those categories, I am sorry for them also, but change in our private and public systems must be accompanied by responsibility within ourselves. We can do more good by fixing ourselves then by fixing systems that revolve around our ability to do so. Instead, let's let those systems fix the things we can't.
