Third World America

Arianna Huffington wrote a book about the disappearance of the middle class in America.  One comment from that book reads: The vast majority of people who file for bankruptcy are middle-class folks who can’t pay their bills because they’ve lost their jobs or been hit with high medical bills.  In fact, a 2009 study by researchers at Harvard and Ohio University show that health-care problems were the root cause of 62 percent of all personal bankruptcies in America in 2007.

When the same researchers did this study across fives states in 2001, health-care problems caused only 50 percent of bankruptcy filings.  According to the American Bankruptcy Institute, America had 1.4 million personal bankruptcies in 2009, a 32 percent increase over the previous year.  Put another way:

Every thirty seconds, someone in this country files for bankruptcy in the way of a serious illness.