Republican, Democrat, Left, Right, Centrist… No matter how citizens in this nation may choose to politically identify ourselves, we are all pretty much in agreement about one thing: This country needs health care reform. Our suggestions as to what shape that reform should come in may not be identical but there is no denying that we are currently on the fast track to bankruptcy if meaningful reform is delayed much longer.

Many individual Americans have in fact already tasted from the bitter cup of personal bankruptcy brought on by devastating brushes with the health care system as it exists now. The American Journal of Medicine released study findings this summer that uncovered the extent of medically related causes that lay behind personal bankruptcy filings in 2007. The AJM study authors implemented conservative controls on their work, ensuring a random sample of bankruptcy filers nationwide and followed up with in depth interviews with a significant cross section of participants. This study, a first ever of its kind due to its broad sampling and well defined parameters, revealed that nearly a whopping 62% of these filers indicated medically related expenses as major contributing factors to their debt disaster.

CNN interviewed an author of the study, Steffie Woolhandler, M.D. who made this concluding comment: “If an illness is long enough and expensive enough, private insurance offers very little protection against medical bankruptcy, and that’s the major finding in our study.” A comment coming from the D.C. based nonpartisan Center for Studying Health System Change in response to the American Journal of Medicine’s study held some skepticism about what actually precipitated the bankruptcy filings but did own that medical expenses were a key player, considering that 1 in 5 American families are “unduly strained” by medical bills.

In the 20 year span from 1981 to 2001, there was a major jump in the percentage of families filing for medically related bankruptcy, a rise from 8% to 46%. The earlier numbers may not have accurately reflected the role of medical bills in the bankruptcy filings, because court records were the means through which the statistics were gathered. Court records do not include the origin of debt that was owed to collection agencies, quite possibly obscuring the role of medical bills. Nevertheless, the American Medical Journal’s most recent 2007 figures of nearly 62% medically related bankruptcy, indicate an unprecedented escalation over a 6 year period. Add that trend to what is still the unknown fallout of our economy’s current recession and we may have some even more frightening revelations.

The stigma that hangs over personal bankruptcy in our country is in part due to the public’s common misunderstanding of what the average filer looks like; many people have a mental image of a hapless slouch. The American Journal of Medicine’s study reveals this misapprehension for the untruth that it is. Most of the debtors surveyed were middle class, middle aged and college educated. 75% of the debtors had health insurance coverage at the onset of their financial and health problems. Typically this insurance left them with the commonplace gaps of high premiums, copayments, hefty deductibles and a range of uncovered medical services. It is important to note that policy rescission is a normative practice among medical insurance companies with 25% cancelling an individual’s policy immediately upon a disability diagnosis and another 25% of companies cancelling within one year of the diagnosis.

If “what is good for the middle class is good for America” is a useful measure of social and economic policy in this country, it is plain to see that viable and visionary health care reform is a mandate. With premiums, deductibles, institutional and procedural costs running on an unchecked course, the system will shortly be unsustainable. This year, 2009, the U.S. is predicted to spend an unprecedented 17.6% of its GDP on health care. What is not taken into account on top of this mind-boggling statistic is the hidden economic and societal costs of medically related personal and small business bankruptcies.

Do yourself a favor as a good citizen and read the American Journal of Medicine’s study in full. (You can find it quickly online at amjmed.com, Vol. 122, Issue 8, pp. 741 to 746.) Be informed, do some further fact scouting and let your congress representative and senator know that the average citizen wants and needs access to the quality of health insurance elected officials are privy to.