As Washington debates health care reform, more and more American are going bankrupt--6,000 a day in May according to USA Today.  And the two issues appear to be closely linked.  A new Harvard study concludes that at least 62% of people who filed for personal bankruptcy in 2007 did so after serious medical illness.  That constituted a 50% rise from 2001.  And in 1981, only 8% of personal bankruptcies were due in part to medical illness. 

Middle class Americans seem to be most susceptible.  "60.3% had attended college and 66.4% owned a home.  20% of families included a military veteran or active duty soldier." Most of those individuals and families that went bankrupt had medical insurance, according to the report: 

77.9% of the individuals whose illness led to bankruptcy had health insurance at the onset of the bankrupting illness; 60.3% had private insurance.

69% of debtor families had coverage at the time of their bankruptcy filing

60% of families had continuous coverage

Only 0.3% of the uninsured went without coverage voluntarily, i.e. because they though they didn't need it - most others couldn't afford it.

The lead author of the study is David Himmelstein of Harvard Medical School.  Elizabeth Warren, who before she chaired the Congressional Oversight Panel rose to prominence as a personal bankruptcy expert at Harvard Law, is also an author of the report.  The full study will be published in the August issue of The American Journal of Medicine, but most of the data is available here.