Alabama Personal Injury Blog - Bankruptcy

Most Bankruptcies Caused By Medical Bills

Jason Knowles — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 13:04:34 GMT

The New York Times recently reported on an interesting bankruptcy study published online on June 4, 2009, in The American Journal of Medicine. According to the study, nearly two out of three bankruptcies arise as the result of medical bills. In 2007, medical problems contributed to 62.1% of all bankruptcies. And between 2001 and 2007, the percentage of all bankruptcies attributable to medical problems rose by 50%.

The data on medical bankruptcy, compiled by researches at Harvard and Ohio University, is based on a survey of 2,314 randomly selected bankruptcy filers during early 2007. Among families who were bankrupted by medical problems, those with private insurance reported average medical bills of $17,749, compared to those who were uninsured, who faced an average of $26,971 in medical costs. Those who had health insurance, but lost it in the course of their illness, reported average medical bills of $22,568.

The Times reported that hospital costs accounted for about half the expenses (48%), followed by prescription drugs (18.6%), doctor’s bills (15.1%) and insurance premiums (4.1%).

Given the current state of the economy, the full scope of the problem is probably even worse today than in 2007. Hopefully, Congress will deal reasonably and wisely with the healthcare issue and reform a broken system.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Jason Knowles

What have we Learned from GM and Chrysler?

Jon Lewis — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 14:54:19 GMT

TEN things we have learned from GM and Chrysler:

1. There is no corporate accountability.

2. They enjoy taking the public's money.

3. Their CEO's and executives have gotten rich while they have failed to properly manage their companies.

4. They took bailout money knowing that they would file bankruptcy - isn't that fraud?

5. They have no insurance, and the court's aren't making them get insurance - why?

6. Chrysler will have no liability to consumers who are killed or injured in a wreck in defective vehicles - Unbelievable!!

7. The taxpayers will be paying their debts for years to come.

8. They cannot compete with foreign car makers.

9. They weren't green until they had to be green.

10. THEY SHOULD HAVE JUST GONE OUT OF BUSINESS!!!

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Jon Lewis

We Can Always File Bankruptcy, Right GM?

Danny Lehane — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 10:30:04 GMT

There will be at least 75 quadrillion articles and opinions written on the GM bankruptcy and the effects of the same before the end of June 2009. This blog will not shed any light on the mechanisms of how GM, Lehman Brothers, Chrysler, Charter, Trump Entertainment, Washington Mutual, Nortel, etc., got to the point where bankruptcy was apparently the only option, but along with everyone else I do have a few questions. Such as: how in the @#$%^!*#>#!(I do not use colorful words but feel free to use whichever one fits here) could any of your high paid CEOs, COOs, CFOs and other high priced, presumably overly educated fancy-boy titled folks not have seen this coming? For a good long while? Earthquakes can occur without any warning but the train wrecks of GM, et al., apparently have been waiting to happen for awhile. The respective disasters did not leave the station the night before bankruptcy became inevitable.

I can’t begin to answer what GM should have done to avoid its current situation but I would like to think that the $2.2 million salary the previous CEO was paid in 2008 and the pay to the current CEO (base salary of $1.7 million, with total 2008 compensation at $8.7 million) was enough to get them to be a tad more proactive than “Huh. This is all so sudden. How could we have seen this coming for the last 15-20 years?” Give me a @#$%^&*!# (same thing as above, fill in your favorite word) break.

Hey, forget the thousands of people negatively affected by this particular collapse, as long as the big boys at GM, Lehman, Chrysler, etc., got paid, it is all good. Clearly they earned it.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Danny Lehane