Bankruptcy Is Something You May Need Without Health Coverage

I am a bankruptcy lawyer in Florida and every week I meet people who want to start over with their lives and get rid of overwhelming debt. Sometimes the debt is their own fault because they misuse credit cards or gamble. Maybe their business failed; maybe they lost their job and were now living way above their means. The cases that really touch a nerve are those people who have health insurance issues and are now facing thousands of dollars in medical bills through no fault of their own.

I had a client once who had been fighting breast cancer. While she was going through cancer treatments her company downsized, and she got laid off and lost her health insurance. She would die without those cancer treatments. She was responding well to the treatments; in fact, when she came to see me, she was in remission. However, her health insurance company opted to not cover her through COBRA. She had to use credit cards to pay for her medications and treatments, and her credit card debt was over $150,000.

Another man had been in a car accident and was in a coma for over a month. He was still on his 90-day probation period with his new job, and his health insurance hadn't started yet. Life was good and things were looking up. But he got into his car and without warning everything changed. He ended up unconscious in the hospital with broken bones all over. When he came out of his coma, he stayed in the hospital for a while and then went to a nursing home for therapy. His company didn't hold his job for him, and his house went into foreclosure. The other driver was at fault, but he didn't have adequate insurance coverage for these kinds of injuries. My client wasn't covered enough either through his own insurance. Without necessary insurance, car or health, he was now looking at hospital and doctor bills at over $300,000.

Another man had a child who needed a kidney transplant. But neither his company nor his insurance company told him there was a change in his coverage, and he ended up with about $110,000 in hospital bills. When his son first started getting treatment for his kidney, the man had full coverage and the insurance covered everything the doctors planned to do. However, as a cost-saving measure, his company cut his hours from full-time to part-time, and his insurance coverage was cut accordingly. The insurance company failed to notify my client or the hospital that there was now a yearly cap on his insurance coverage. Any costs incurred over that cap would have to be paid out of pocket. Doctors continue to treat the child, and he even got the kidney transplant. But when the bills were submitted to the insurance company, they refused to pay whatever was over the cap. The ironic thing was the operation was done early in December so the child could be home by Christmas. Had they waited until January, the next year's coverage would have started, and my client wouldn't have been in this situation.

People come into my office all of the time dealing with overwhelming medical expenses. Inadequate health insurance can ruin a person's life if they have the misfortune of facing accidents and illnesses such as these. In catastrophic events, medical expenses can soar out of control very quickly.