American Journal of Medicine. The report states without reservation, "Using a conservative definition, 62.1 percent of all bankruptcies in 2007 were medical."
But that's not the end of the story.
We should also note that the study appeared in a peer-reviewed journal, but two of the authors belong to the group Physicians for a National Health Program, a group that advocates for a universal, single-payer health program.
Finally, we feel another study is worth mentioning that complicates the definition of medical bankruptcies. Ning Zhu of the University of California, Davis, has a 2008 draft study analyzing bankruptcies filed in Delaware in 2003. He found that overspending on household expenditures such as houses and automobiles contributed significantly to bankruptcy filings. His data show that the overspending made people more likely to file for bankruptcy after an illness.
That may sound like a "no duh" conclusion, but it raises questions about medical bankruptcies and how they are defined. If people overspend so much that they need everything to go right to meet their financial obligations, and then they get sick, should those bankruptcies properly be categorized as medical bankruptcies? We're not suggesting there's an easy answer here, but it does make the category of "medical bankruptcy" a good bit more complicated.