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Are your medical bills pushing you towards bankruptcy?

Medical bills are one of the major causes of filing bankruptcy in America. Of all the bankruptcy cases lined up before the USA court, 50% were caused by insurmountable medical costs, even when around 40% of the bankrupts had health insurance to take care of the medical costs. Following are some startling statistics,

• Around 2 million Americans every year are forced to consider bankruptcy owing to their overwhelming medical costs.
• Around 7 million children were affected due to bankruptcy filed by their parents.
• The worst affected section of the population is the middle class.
• Almost 60% of the bankrupts were forced to go without much needed health care to avoid owing further debts.
• Many of the households were forced to curtail their consumptions.
• Many were forced to drop health insurance since they can no longer pay the premium and thus slipped into more debts.

Bankrupt even when you had health insurance!

Often times the co-payment alone can force the individual to consider bankruptcy. Today’s health insurance policies with high deductibles, co-payments and other such costs offer very little protection to the policy holder. Therefore, even when you are covered you can accumulate sufficient amount of outstanding to find bankruptcy as the sole option.

But, you may still try to avoid bankruptcy!

Bankruptcy should be looked upon as the last option because not only it ruins your credit report by staying on it for ten years, it also ruins families and their dreams. But what would you do when buried nose deep into medical bill debt.

• First, you should try to negotiate with the hospitals. Some hospitals would waive the medical expenses if you qualify for the low income group waiver.
• There are also non-profit organizations which help people dealing with medical bill debts. Some of these organizations may also play the part of negotiator in reducing your share in medical bills.
• You can try to work out a payment plan with the hospitals as well. At least it’d look good on your credit report. Further, always try to work-out a deal with the primary creditor and avoid the bills going to collection. Collection agencies are always hard to deal with.