Americans are only "One Illness Away from Financial Ruin"

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"Unless you're a Warren Buffett or Bill Gates, you're one illness away from financial ruin in this country"
Lead author Steffie Woolhandler, M.D., of the Harvard Medical School regarding their recent study on medical bills leading to bankruptcies in the US.

Everyone knows that people that go bankrupt have been living beyond their means, enjoyin the good life. Or at least that is what we have been told about the common folk that are unfortunate enough to go bankrupt. But for major corporations and banks that get into trouble, their leaders either get big fat obscene bonuses or big fat obscene golden parachutes while the American public is left to pick up the pieces.

Most people that go bankrupt now are basically indentured servants to banks. The Bankruptcy Act passed a few years back made it very hard to go bankrupt and start fresh. Instead if you now go belly up, you'll likely stay that way for a good long while.

The President and Congress should have changed our present bankruptcy system of indentured servitude back to the more realistic and helpful "fresh start" approach. Instead they recently gave us some phony Credit Card Bill that does little but try to protect the Credit Card Companies from massive public anger and outrage over their abuses.

A recent study found that bankruptcies are really not due to people living it up in Hawaii and buying a Mercedes Benz. Rather, according to the study, 60% of people that go bankrupt are brought down by medical bills. Also, bankruptcies due to medical bills have risen 50% in just 6 years.

Moreover, what is interesting in the stats of the recent study is that three quarters of those that went bankrupt over medical bills had medical insurance.

So unless America gets a real health insurance plan that actually covers medical expenses, like a single payer program (medicare for everyone), then corporate America is just back to playing games with the lives and finances of the American people.

To get rich by ripping off the suffering somehow doesn't seem right to me. Well maybe I am just a bleeding heart do gooder.

I guess people like me used to be called "commie libs," but now most Americans realize that we were just sounding the warnings.

So here is a big fat warning: AMERICANS NEED REAL HEALTH CARE THAT COVERS EVERYONE AND IS TAKEN OUT OF THE HANDS OF PRIVATE INSURERS AND PLACED INTO THE HANDS OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT, WHERE IT BELONGS.

The continued corporate control of our public health care system will only bring further suffering and economic hardship for the American people.


Read More Details on the Recent Study at CNN.com