since no one else responded to your question I will: the answer is clearly yes. “the amount of bankruptcy-due-to-debt might actually be a lot lower than it is today” – and then again, it “might actually” be a lot higher. and since the primary concern is for a “truly free market,” one is entitled to be agnostic as to the consequences for children of poverty. That is their problem — we are just concerned with getting ourselves to a truly free market.

It’s time to stop thinking about healthcare as a consumption good like Josh’s power sucking bigscreen TV.

–Is it a proper function of government to declare the Titanic “an international maritime memorial”?

–Finding true love in …

Two questions:

The answer to the first is, obviously: whatever level of bankruptcy-due-to-debt level you would observe in a market economy. Unfortunately, we don’t have anything approaching a market economy in the highly regulated health insurance and health care markets, so we can’t know what that level actually is. One should allow the possibility that in a truly free market, the amount of bankruptcy-due-to-debt might actually be a lot lower than it is today.

The second question is flawed in its framing, as partly exposed by Ryan. This question implicitly presupposes that universal guaranteed coverage would substantially eliminate the excess costs of care for all individuals such that bankruptcy would no longer pose a significant risk for a large number of people. This premise, however, is highly doubtful, even aside from ignoring the implicit trade-off between universal coverage, actual access to health care, and innovation in treatments.

Well, you might have the answer to that question, if those who presented the study had resisted the temptation to obviously and shamelessly inflate the results.

A counterquestion: could taxation levels and expanding queues ever get to a level that would lead to concern among those who propose socializing the healthcare system?

Just askin’, is all…

This page provides several reports on the problems that medical debt poses.

Also, check out this study on how even small levels of medical debt can cause a “downward spiral” for low-income individuals.

If one reads the Harvard study, it is clear that the claims of Zywicki and Heriot are malicious and unfair. The Harvard study’s authors come clean about the significant limitations of the survey data they are using. They draw only the most general, tentative, and circumspect conclusions. Their policy prescriptions – paid disability and sick leave, stopgap insurance coverage between jobs, and catastrophic insurance coverage – are sufficiently bromidic to leave one wondering what all the fuss is about.

Regarding the idea that uncontrolled gambling is a major and legitimate cause of medical bankruptcy, the authors merely state that uncontrolled gambling is defined as a psychiatric disorder and that it contributes (not causes, mind you) to 1 percent of bankruptcies. They admit that out-of-pocket expenses for debtors were often below levels typically considered catastrophic, and attribute causal impact more to concomitant income loss or the ongoing need for costly medical care over a period years. Medical causes of bankruptcy related to childbirth-related conditions that led, among other things, to one parent leaving their job to stay home with a child. Hardly a “lifestyle” decision.

In a Washington Times op-ed yesterday Gail Heriot and I noted that Congress “has been on a binge diet of junk social science.”

Josh W……