Medical Bills Cause 2 out of 3 Bankruptcies
A person injured through no fault of their own may also incur serious financial problems and possible bankruptcy. The American Journal of Medicine published a study based on randomly selected bankruptcy filers during 2007. The results were that even those families with insurance struggle to pay the medical bills when a serious illness or accident occurs in the family. This study was done prior to the current economic crisis and therefore probably underestimates the current situation.
Even with private health insurance, the families who filed bankruptcy because of an illness had average medical bills of $17, 749. The uninsured families averaged $26,971 in medical bills. Half of these expenses were hospital costs alone. “The U.S. health care financing system is broken, and not only for the poor and uninsured,” the study authors wrote. “Middle-class families frequently collapse under the strain of a health care system that treats physical wounds, but often inflicts fiscal ones.”
Insurance companies are often slow to settle and often tend to underpay the insured. This leaves families in great financial stress that at times they can not recover from, especially if the illness causes income to be lost. When a person is injured through someone else’s negligence they are entitled by law to have their medical bills and lost wages paid for by the negligent person or their insurance company. An experienced personal injury attorney is often necessary to make sure an insurance company will not get away with paying less than what is fair or legally required. Also, it is important for jurors to hold those responsible for causing the harm fully responsible for that harm, rather than making the innocent person bear that burden alone.
