Medical bankruptcies in Massachusetts are up despite the new Massachusetts health care law. In a study published in the American Journal of Medicine, three Harvard affiliated researchers conclude that the new Massachusetts Health Care law is resulting in more, not fewer, bankruptcies. The numbers, according to the researchers, are that as a percentage of all bankruptcies, “Massachusetts bankruptcies with a medical cause went from 59.3 percent to 52.9 percent,” however, the Harvard folks say this is a “non-significant decrease of 6.4 percentage points,” and then go on to point out that the total bankruptcies in Massachusetts (as everywhere since the Great Recession) is up, so, therefore, medical bankruptcies are up, too. The conclusions seem to be that folks are underinsured.
While we have no resources to undertake a similar study, nor are we able to review the elaborate statistical analysis undertaken by the doctors and professors at our Ivy neighbor (all of whom, by the way now seem to be stationed in New York, it strikes us as too little too soon with too much of a political agenda. Further, since only a nominal percentage of our Chapter 7 personal bankruptcies are “medical bankruptcies,” antidotal evidence says that these researchers could be simply using minimal facts to promote an agenda. Is that being too critical? Perhaps, but perhaps not since one of the co-authors is promoting a Canadian style single payer model, where there are fewer medical bankruptcies: “American families need the kind of comprehensive coverage that protects people in nations with single-payer national health insurance, such as Canada, ” said Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, currently a professor of public health at City University of New York and formally a professor at Harvard.