Medical bills underlie 60 percent of U.S. bankruptcies

[Mort Zuckerman]

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Subject: [SpinLyme] Medical bills underlie 60 percent of U.S.
bankruptcies

Date: Jun 4, 2009 6:06 AM

ARTICLE BELOW
=========================

That would be because Lyme victims are
persecuted and tortured, despite the fact
that the NIH had an entire subdivision of
NINDS dedicated to discovering why Lyme
results in Multiple Sclerosis:
http://www.actionlyme.org/MARTIN_NINDS_MS_CHRONIC_LYME.htm

Notice that I separate the Lyme crooks's own data
and chapters on the outcomes of Lyme:
Crooks on Imitators & Death:
http://www.actionlyme.org/CHP_9_IDSA_REVIEWS.htm
Multiple Sclerosis:
http://www.actionlyme.org/MARTIN_NINDS_MS_CHRONIC_LYME.htm
Crooks on Dementia & Death:
http://www.actionlyme.org/BRAIN_PERMANENT.htm
Crooks like Gary Wormser on Immunosuppression leading
to the Imitators from Yale's vaccine and the auto-vaccination
from spirochetal blebbing:
http://www.actionlyme.org/PAM3CYS_IMMUNE_SUPPRESSION.htm
http://www.actionlyme.org/BARBOURS_STEALTH_BOMBERS.htm
Deploying the Hairballers to deny us *all* benefits:
http://www.actionlyme.org/SCIENTIFIC_FRAUD_WITH_INTENT.htm
The utter brainlessness of psychiatry:
http://www.actionlyme.org/BIOMARKERS2.htm

There is so much published scientific evidence of
their lies and crime not to mention how much grant
money they demand to study a disease that allegedly
does not exist. Had they told the truth, Allen Steere
really *would* have been some great medical discoverer.
He might have discovered Pam3Cys immunosuppression
and helped people with all sorts of diseases, worldwide.

Unfortunately we had no choice but to complain
to lawyers about psychiatrists, when that's like
asking dogs not to lick themselves:
http://www.actionlyme.org/USDOJ_COMPLAINT_RICO.htm
It is in the nature of both to be low-lives.

Clearly the greatest medical discovery of all
time would have been how we fix lawyers and
psychiatrists and get them to stop thinking like
petty, backstabbing, gossiping, lying teenaged
girls... if we could get them to start acting
like men...
http://www.theworkofgod.org/library/Sermons/JdVianey/Sermons.htm#THE%20TONGUE%20OF%20THE%20SCANDAL-MONGER
"THE TONGUE OF THE SCANDAL-MONGER

"Anyone who is unfortunate enough to come under the tongue of the
scandalmonger is like a grain of corn under the grinding stone in a
mill: he is torn, crushed, entirely destroyed. People like these will
fasten onto you intentions that you never had; they will poison all
your actions and your movements. If you have enough piety to wish to
fulfil your religious duties, you are only a hypocrite, an angel in
the church and a demon in the house. If you do any good or charitable
works, they will think that this is just through pride and so that you
may gain notice. If you are not worldly and not interested in worldly
affairs, you are said to be odd and singular and to have no spirit. If
you look after your own affairs carefully, you are nothing but a
miser. Let me go further, my dear brethren, and say that the tongue of
the scandalmonger is like the worm which gnaws at the good fruit --
that is, the best actions that people do -- and tries to turn all to
bad account.

"The tongue of the scandalmonger is a grub which taints the most
beautiful of the flowers and upon them leaves behind it the disgusting
trace of is own slime."


KMDickson
http://www.actionlyme.org
------------------

From:
To: Spin...@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [SpinLyme] Medical bills underlie 60 percent of U.S.
bankruptcies
Date: Jun 4, 2009 1:35 AM

"Among common diagnoses, nonstroke neurologic illnesses such as
multiple sclerosis were associated with the highest out-of-pocket
expenditures (mean $34,167)"

http://www.reuters.com/article/healthNews/idUSTRE5530Y020090604

Medical bills underlie 60 percent of U.S. bankruptcies: study
Thu Jun 4, 2009 1:10am EDT
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Medical bills are involved in more than 60
percent of U.S. personal bankruptcies, an increase of 50 percent in
just six years, U.S. researchers reported on Thursday.

More than 75 percent of these bankrupt families had health insurance
but still were overwhelmed by their medical debts, the team at Harvard
Law School, Harvard Medical School and Ohio University reported in the
American Journal of Medicine.

"Using a conservative definition, 62.1 percent of all bankruptcies in
2007 were medical; 92 percent of these medical debtors had medical
debts over $5,000, or 10 percent of pretax family income," the
researchers wrote.

"Most medical debtors were well-educated, owned homes and had middle-
class occupations."

The researchers, whose work was paid for by the Robert Wood Johnson
Foundation, said the share of bankruptcies that could be blamed on
medical problems rose by 50 percent from 2001 to 2007.

"Unless you're Warren Buffett, your family is just one serious illness
away from bankruptcy," Harvard's Dr. David Himmelstein, an advocate
for a single-payer health insurance program for the United States,
said in a statement.

"For middle-class Americans, health insurance offers little
protection," he added.

The United States is embarking on an overhaul of its healthcare
system, which is now a patchwork of public programs such as Medicare
and employer-sponsored health insurance that leaves 15 percent of the
population -- 46 million people -- with no coverage.

About 170 million people get health insurance through an employer but
President Barack Obama says soaring healthcare costs are hurting the
economy and forcing businesses to drop medical insurance for their
workers.

CANCELED COVERAGE

"Nationally, a quarter of firms cancel coverage immediately when an
employee suffers a disabling illness; another quarter do so within a
year," the report reads.

Obama told Congress on Wednesday he was open to making mandatory
health insurance part of the overhaul but only with exemptions for the
poor and for small businesses.

Neither Congress nor Obama are considering the kind of single-payer
plan advocated by Himmelstein and his colleague Dr. Steffie
Woolhandler.

"We need to rethink health reform," Woolhandler said. "Covering the
uninsured isn't enough.

"Only single-payer national health insurance can make universal,
comprehensive coverage affordable by saving the hundreds of billions
we now waste on insurance overhead and bureaucracy."

The researchers surveyed 2,134 random families who filed for
bankruptcy between January and April in 2007, before the current
recession began.

They used public bankruptcy court records and survey 1,032 respondents
by telephone.

While only 29 percent directly blamed medical bills for their
bankruptcy, 62 percent had medical bills that totaled more than 10
percent of family income, said an illness was responsible, had lost
income due to illness or some other medical factor.

"Among common diagnoses, nonstroke neurologic illnesses such as
multiple sclerosis were associated with the highest out-of-pocket
expenditures (mean $34,167), followed by diabetes ($26,971), injuries
($25,096), stroke ($23,380), mental illnesses ($23,178), and heart
disease ($21,955)," the researchers wrote.

(Editing by Bill Trott)


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]





"[Real] scientists are *fiercely* independent. That's the good
news."-- NIH's Top Fool, Anthony Fauci