Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment Is Killing America's Heartland

by Jonathan M. Metzl

ACA also protected Americans from medical bankruptcies. Researchers estimate that over 60 percent of people who file for bankruptcy in the United States do so because they are unable to pay for medical costs due to a lack of health insurance or so-called underinsurance (insurance not sufficient to cover the costs of a major health incident). A 2009 study by a group of scholars in Boston, including a rising Harvard law professor named Elizabeth Warren, found that 62.1 percent of all US bankruptcies in 2007 were medical. Ninety-two percent of these medical debtors had medical bills over $5,000, or 10 percent of pretax family income, and the remainder met criteria for medical bankruptcy because they lost significant income due to illness or mortgaged a home to pay medical bills.