Medical Bills: Insured and Still Bankrupt

By Deb Gruver of The Wichita Eagle
Dan Delaney thinks every day about the doctors who cared for him when cancer tried to kill him last year. He feels he owes his life to those doctors. He also owes them--and the places where they tended him -- about $350,000, a debt he can't repay.

Delaney, a 35-year-old electrician, is one of a growing number of Americans filing bankruptcy because of medical bills.

On March 7, he and his wife, Crista, signed a 44-page petition for Chapter 7 bankruptcy, something they never thought they would have to do as a couple.

A Harvard Medical School study last year found that half of bankruptcies are due in part to medical bills. And the number increased 23-fold from 1981 to 2001.

"The worst time for people to have financial stress is exactly when it comes," said David Himmelstein, an author of the study.

The Delaneys say that filing bankruptcy was embarrassing, no doubt.

But when she thought her husband was going to die, money was the last thing on her mind--at least at the beginning.

Started with a cough

For months, Dan thought it was bronchitis sucking 30 pounds from his small frame and making him so weak that taking out the trash felt like running a marathon.

He suffered night sweats and coughed all the time. He slept sitting up because lying down hurt so much.

When he discovered his illness was far more serious -- he saw Crista's doctor on a Wednesday and found out two days later that he had stage-three non-Hodgkin's lymphoma -- he and Crista believed not only that he would survive but that their insurance would cover the cost of keeping him alive.

Earlier in the year, Dan had changed jobs and lost his insurance. After a long waiting period, Crista was able to put him on a policy that covered her and her son, she said. The company collected premiums for six months, the couple said.

Dan went through chemotherapy, dialysis and other treatment before his insurance company determined he had a pre-existing condition that would not be covered, the couple said.

"She took care of the money, and I tried to heal," Dan said at their home outside Valley Center. "I wasn't good for anything. I made myself sick trying."

While he was in the hospital for weeks, Crista slept on the floor of their living room. If he couldn't be comfortable, she thought, neither would she.

Dan went back to work at the beginning of this year.

Ha Ta is one of Dan's doctors and said she doesn't think about the money when she cares for patients.

"I can't think of it," she said. "If that's what drives me, I shouldn't be in practice."

When patients in her practice with physician Donna Sweet can't pay, Ta tries to put them in touch with groups such as Project Access, a nonprofit organization that helps patients who cannot afford to pay.

The list of creditors holding unsecured claims against the Delaneys outlines the cost of having cancer, line by line.

A sampling:

• Cancer Center of Kansas, $84,316
• Northeast Wichita Dialysis Center, $66,330.35
• South Central Path Lab, $17,519
• Via Christi Regional Medical Center, $142,923.19

In all, two dozen creditors are marked as medical on their filing.

Last year, Harvard researchers conducted what is considered the first extensive study on the medical causes of bankruptcy.

They surveyed 1,771 filers from 2001 in five federal courts and completed personal interviews with 931. About half cited medical bills as a cause for their bankruptcy.

For most people the researchers interviewed, the idea "that an illness would drive them into bankruptcy was not on their radar screen," Himmelstein said.

That was certainly true for the Delaneys.

"Here I am, a top real estate agent at the company, and I had to file bankruptcy because my husband had cancer. He came this close to dying," Crista said, her thumb and forefinger spread about an inch apart.

To pay off the medical bills, they would have had to have brought in an extra $10,000 a month.

"About the only thing we could do was file," Crista said. "We have a mortgage and a 10-year-old. Even if we sold the house and everything we had, we still would not be able to pay" the bills.

Himmelstein says two things must happen to turn around the trend.

"First we need universal, high-quality health insurance, national health insurance that is disconnected from your job," he said. "You need to have it whether you can pay for it or not. Health insurance can go away if you're sick and out of work. We need a seamless health insurance system, which I think is known as national health insurance."

Increased consumer demand is a big reason why health care costs are rising, said Larrie Ann Lower, a lobbyist and executive director of the Kansas Association of Health Plans, a not-for-profit group made up of health insurance companies that serve the state.

© The Wichita Eagle (2006)