Health insurance is defined - as insurance that compensates the insured for expenses or loss incurred for medical reasons, as through illness or hospitalization. Simply put its protection of a person or group against financial losses from illness or injury. Can you survive with out it? Most likely, but should you? Not unless you're very wealthy, medical costs today are on the rise and more and more American's find them selves filing for bankruptcy because of outstanding medical bills.
According to a July 2, 2009 press release from the American Bankruptcy Institute (ABI), personal bankruptcy filings in the U.S. for the first half of 2009 have climbed to over 35% higher than the pervious year. This information is based on the research from the National Bankruptcy Research Center. This of course isn't all related to medical expenses, because the failing financial markets and home owners losing their homes to foreclosure brought in its fair share of casualties.
Nonetheless, a more recent finding published by the American Journal of Medicine was posted at the examiner.com on July 15, "showed that 62% of personal bankruptcies filed in 2007 ; before the economic tsunami that hit our nation, were in fact due to healthcare costs. The article goes on to say that most Americans who did file were "middle-class", homeowners with college educations, whom of those filers, seventy five percent reported having health insurance.
Older similar studies on health expense related bankruptcy filings were problematic, based on court records even though the filings for medical expense related debt was substantial, the court based studies resulted in often lower filings, understated because many of these medical debts were not on court records, why? Because many of these medical debts were disguised at credit card debt, or carried over into home loans as people mortgage their homes when rates were low and property values high. Also medical debts that were turned over to collection agencies weren't generally recognizable in court records.
The sobering conclusion to all this, is that to be with out any medical insurance and risk falling further into debt, possibly leading down the road to bankruptcy in the future is avoidable if you can find a basic medical insurance plan or an inexpensive health care plan, There are many reputable companies that offer good basic coverage or even catastrophic coverage plans that are affordable on most budgets. Don't wait until you have suffered an injury or serious illness to remind you it's time to look into a health care plan.
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