harvard study bankruptcy health care
Why do we have a bad health care system where we are one diagnosis away from bankruptcy?
In a 2005 Harvard University study of more than 1,700 bankruptcies across the country, researchers found that medical problems were behind half of them — and three-quarters of those bankrupt people actually had health insurance. As Elizabeth Warren, a Harvard Law professor who helped conduct the study, wrote in the Washington Post, “Nobody’s safe … A comfortable middle-class lifestyle? Good education? Decent job? No safeguards there. Most of the medically bankrupt were middle-class homeowners who had been to college and had responsible jobs — until illness struck.”
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1883149,00.html?iid=digg_share
Why do some people think that we have a good health care system? We have good technology, but the rationing of that health care to people who don’t need it sucks.
This country let a type of business, the insurance industry, ride health care like a magic carpet to money.
Policy was made that was/is good for the insurance industry not that was good for the country or the patients.
This was done in part because of a belief that free market capitalism would make everyone rich. Unfortunately, the reality of political worship of free markets are that they make everyone that’s already rich richer and to hell with the rest.
Then the people who bought the newspapers and radio stations and TV broadcasters told their media companies to make “liberal”, “socialist”, and “Progressive” bad words.
voila, you have the mess we’re in.
