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Politics : A US National Health Care System? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: John Koligman who wrote (4299)	2/5/2008 4:28:16 PM
From: Lazarus_Long	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

Post it again, John. Others might like to see it who missed it before and, believe it or not, in spite of being the former moderator of this thread, I hardly read every post on it. If you have advanced search you should be able to find it. If you don't have it, you probably have a friend who does. "In an article published recently on the Internet, Prof. Robert Lawless presented data showing a tight and positive relationship between annual measurements of consumer debt level and the numbers of non-business bankruptcies filed in the same year.2 From the perspective of this column, which attempts to characterize bankruptcy questions by reference to quantitative information, Prof. Lawless's work provides a useful starting place to consider some problems facing the analysis of the causes of consumer bankruptcy. There are also lessons to be learned about the relationship between the causes of bankruptcy and decisions about how the bankruptcy system should operate. It will come as no surprise that, as a general proposition, consumer bankruptcy filings fluctuate with debt levels. We would be surprised, in fact, if the opposite were true." usdoj.gov Now while that says debt load causes bankruptcy (SURPRISE!), it doesn't establish what caused that load. You ae very likely to find out soon what effect a national health system has on health care. I am considering what country I want ot emigrate to.

To: John Koligman who wrote (4299)	2/5/2008 6:31:05 PM
From: Lazarus_Long	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 42652

There's some explaining that needs to be done here, John. "In our society today, revisions to the bankruptcy laws and changes in consumer attitude toward bankruptcy have fostered a climate in which people regard bankruptcy as a more plausible remedy for financial problems than they once did—a fact that recent statistics support. In 1988 there were 549,612 personal bankruptcies in our country. By 1998, 10 years later, there were a total of 1,398,182 personal bankruptcies in America and another 44,367 business bankruptcies. In the year 2001 there were almost 1.5 million personal bankruptcies filed. Assuming that this trend continues, we can realistically expect to see two million bankruptcies each year by the year 2008!" Now if illness is the prime cause of bankruptcy (which it would be if it caused even half), we HAVE to assume tha t the serious illness rate of the US population TRIPLED in the 13 years between 1988 and 2001. Caqn you think of a reason why it would?