Study Shows Unpaid Medical Bills Put Families in Debt

By Shuka Kalantari

While the federal government plans to bail out the financial sector with $700 billion of taxpayer dollars, a growing number of tax payers are grappling to get themselves out of debt from unpaid health care bills.

Yesterday's New York Times discussed two studies released on Wednesday by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Center for Studying Health System Change. The studies show that more and more American families have debt from health care.

"Premiums for employer-sponsored health insurance rose to $12,680 annually for family coverage this year – with employees on average paying $3,354 out of their paychecks to cover their share of the cost," said the Kaiser Family Foundation news release of the study.

About 57 million Americans live in families struggling to pay their medical bills. Of that group, 43 million people have some sort of insurance coverage (often with very high premiums and deductibles) but are still under financial stress.

One of the study's conclusions was that "...insurance coverage in and of itself may no longer be sufficient    to protect many people from the high cost of health care..." Perhaps this is renewed evidence of the need for government intervention.

The hands-off approach didn't work out too well on Wall Street. Is health care next?