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.
