Telegraph buys into Medical Bankruptcy Myth

The Nashua Telegraph has picked up on a study from Harvard Professor Elizabeth Warren that claims that over 60% of all bankruptcies are caused by out-of-control medical bills:

The researchers estimate that this year medical bills are causing one American every 15 seconds to file for bankruptcy. That is not a health-care system or a national health-care policy. And it is neither economically sound nor humane.

The most frightening – and telling – thing to emerge from the Harvard study was its finding that even reasonably good employer-provided insurance is no safeguard against financial ruin.

Alarming, if true. And certainly a great reason to completely reform a system that delivers the best medical care in the world. If true. It's not.

Professor Warren has carved out a nice little niche over the past decade. Every few years, she uses the same flawed methodology to generate another study showing that medical bills are the main reason why Americans are going broke. Here's what she found in 2005.

Over at the Atlantic Montly, Megan McArdle has carved out an even narrower niche, debunking Elizabeth Warren:

Yet upon closer examination, it turns out that it is not just wrong, but actively, aggressively wrong. Warren and her co-authors have obscured important and obvious facts that call the integrity of the work into serious question.

The text itself raises a huge red flags. It's hard to believe that more than half of people who have been pushed into bankruptcy by a medical issue don't understand this fact. Perhaps they are not the brightest bulbs on the Christmas tree, but could it really be true that most people catapaulted into a financial crisis by their medical bills don't even notice that health care expenses are their main problem?

Warren publishes her work for the group, Physcians for a National Health Program, which advocates for a single-payer, government controlled health care takeover. That doesn't invalidate her conclusions. Her own shoddy research does.

Good science is a question searching for an answer. Warren's work is a conclusion in search of a headline.