For Immediate Release
July 17, 2007
Conyers Convenes Judiciary Hearing To Examine Medical Debt Crisis
Hearing Marks Launch of Congressional Initiative To Expose Harm Caused To Millions of Underinsured and Uninsured Patients in American For-Profit Health Care System
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Congressman John Conyers, Jr. made the following remarks today at a press conference preceding a Judiciary Committee subcommittee hearing on Working Families in Crisis: Medical Debt and Bankruptcy.“Today the Judiciary Subcommittee on Commercial and Administrative Law will examine a serious crisis in this country that has not received much attention from Congress: how debt from unpaid medical bills drives millions of Americans into bankruptcy or damages their credit. Today’s hearing marks the beginning of an unprecedented and sustained effort to study this problem and devise a legislative solution. I have also asked the Government Accountability Office (GAO) today to conduct an analysis of this problem to further inform us as we proceed in this effort.
About two million Americans each year are forced into bankruptcy because they or a family member suffer from an illness. Being covered by private health insurance is no protection: three-quarters of these medical bankruptcy filers were insured when they got sick. A recent Harvard study estimates that nearly half of personal bankruptcies are caused by unpaid medical debt, making it the second leading cause of bankruptcy in the nation. In fact, one third of Americans under the age of 65 have problems related to medical debt.
Medical debt forces people to have to choose between paying the rent or paying for medicine. It devastates people’s credit, so that they can’t get a home mortgage, or a loan to go to school or buy a car. It forces them to delay needed medical care because a doctor or hospital won’t see them if they have outstanding medical bills.
It is unconscionable that any American should be ruined financially just because they got sick. No American should be shut out of our health care system because they fear they might go into debt, have their credit score damaged, or be turned away at the hospital door because they have unpaid medical bills.
We can do better. In this, the richest country in the world, we must do better. In fact, the problem of medical debt is a uniquely American phenomenon. In the rest of the industrialized world, where governments guarantee health care for all, there is no such thing as medical bankruptcy.
Today’s hearing is the beginning of an effort to find a near-term remedy for this unacceptable situation. But I believe the only long-term solution is the enactment of a national single payer health program that is publicly financed and privately delivered, such as that proposed in my legislation, H.R. 676, the United States National Health Insurance Act. If H.R. 676 were enacted, nobody in America would ever receive a medical bill, and therefore, no American would have medical debt or be forced to declare bankruptcy because they got sick.”
###07-17-2007###
 |
Press Release List |  |