50% of personal bankruptcies in the U.S. are due to people being unable to afford medical bills

Two recent studies published by Harvard Medical School and the Health Affairs Journal revealed that approximately 50% of personal bankruptcies in the U.S. were a result of people being unable to pay medical bills. It was found that the typical person who filed bankruptcy due to medical bills was about 40 years old and a middle-class homeowner. Amazingly, 68% of these people actually had health insurance! However, injury and illness often lead to loss of job and on top of that, loss of health care benefits. It should be stated (although it was not included in the study) that some these people probably had inadequate health insurance benefits which did not offer strong catastrophic coverage. Surprisingly, the out-of-pocket medical debt of $12,000 was the average among these Americans that filed bankruptcy.