A day in bankruptcy court would make you sick

[Guest guest]

A day in bankruptcy court would make you sick

My View: Fran Quigley Posted: June 30, 2008

It is Friday morning at the federal courthouse in Downtown

Indianapolis, and U.S. Bankruptcy Court Trustee Silver sits

behind a low table in a room on the fourth floor calling out names of

Hoosiers who have filed for discharge of their debts. In a somber

scene with the air of a fiscal confessional booth, many petitioners

come forward with slumped shoulders and slightly bowed heads, and then

softly answer Silver's questions about the financial collapses that

led them to this room.

A young woman from Southside Indianapolis has racked up enormous debt

due to the costs of childbirth. A middle-aged couple from the

Northwestside was sued for payment of their medical bills. Another

woman had the misfortune of being attacked by a dog before health

insurance from her new job kicked in. Even after turning a lawsuit

settlement over to bill collectors for hospitals and doctors, she

still owes them $35,000.

Most of those in Silver's court have several things in common, in

addition to the humiliating surrender of their cars and homes and the

shredding of the credit cards they used to pay for emergency care.

Most are working, and many of them had some health insurance at the

time of their illnesses or injury. But their insurance didn't cover

the costs of their treatment.

" More and more of the middle class is finding out that even if they

have jobs and insurance, they can be wiped out by medical events that

are not even catastrophic, " says Dr. Stack, a retired

orthopedist and co-founder of Hoosiers for a Commonsense Health Plan,

the state's chapter of Physicians for a National Health Program. " You

can run up a high five-figure bill real easily. "

A Harvard study published in 2005 estimated that about half of all

bankruptcies filed in the U.S. have their origins in medical costs, a

ratio that jibes with Silver's and other bankruptcy veterans'

observations here in Indianapolis. While the rest of the world's

industrialized nations provide health coverage to all or nearly all of

their populations, the U.S. mass-produces the distinctly American

phenomenon of medical bankruptcies.

The remedy prescribed by Stack and his fellow reform-minded physicians

is a national U.S. health insurance program that would essentially

expand the existing Medicare program to cover all people for all

medical care. " The policy issues have been pretty much worked out, "

Stack says. " It is just political will that is stopping reform --

overcoming the interest groups and the propaganda about socialized

medicine. "

The chief obstacle is the health insurance industry, whose aggressive

lobbying and notorious " Harry and Louise " TV ads helped doom the last

effort at major health-care reform.

" The industry is an obsolete middleman that takes a big cut of premium

cost and puts it into a black hole of advertising and administration

and profit, rather than into health care, " Stack says.

Unfortunately, the next president doesn't seem poised to challenge the

bankrupt status quo. Presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama's

health-care plan doesn't aim for universal coverage and is less

ambitious than the ones proposed by his vanquished rivals Hillary

Clinton and . McCain's proposal is based on

individual tax credits, which put faith in the market that has already

priced health care out of the reach of 47 million uninsured Americans.

One of those millions is the Greenwood woman in her 50s who confirmed

for bankruptcy trustee Silver that she was working full-time even

while compiling a mountain of debt consisting entirely of medical bills.

" So if you had health coverage, you would not be here today, right? "

Silver asked her. She took a deep breath, looked down and nodded.

Quigley is director of operations for the Indiana-Kenya Partnership.

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