Personal Bankruptcy Crisis Solved

I heard this on a network news story yesterday. "Every thirty seconds in the United States, someone files bankruptcy in the aftermath of a serious health problem."

Being a numbers kind of guy, I thought I'd see just how many bankruptcies that was in a year. Here's what I came up with. Using the "every thirty seconds" number, the total medical related bankruptcies for one year would be equal to 1,051,200. (2 filings x 60 minutes = 120 an hour, x 24 hours = 2,880 a day, x 365 days = 1,051,200 a year) According to the Financial Post, the total number of bankruptcies in 2008 were 1,117,771. The Financial Post further states that of the 2008 bankruptcies, 45,546 are business filings. This means there were only 23,025 filings for reasons other than "serious health problems" if this news story's claim is true. Really? Only 2% of bankruptcies are due to financial irresponsibility or circumstances other than unpayable medical costs?

In a way I feel much better, knowing that there aren't a bunch of people out there living beyond their means and misusing credit, buying houses, cars, boats and other toys they can't afford. Maybe the government should just write checks to all the doctors and medical facilities to pay off all these health related bills that are causing the personal bankruptcies of these otherwise responsible citizens. It sure makes more sense than the billions and billions of dollars spent to bail out the banks and other companies. This simple plan would eliminate nearly 98% of the personal bankruptcies IF the numbers from this news story are correct. I saw it on TV. It's got to be true, right?