Experts pick apart Bill Clinton's medical bankruptcy comment
Jennifer Jacobs
Des Moines Register Staff Writer
December 10, 2007
A fact check is in order on a comment about medical bankruptcies that Bill Clinton and other leading Democrats keep making, two dueling experts say.
“Over half of all the bankruptcies in this decade can be tied to personal health emergencies,” the former president said Monday at a Hillary Clinton campaign rally in Ames.
And he’s said it before while stumping for his wife’s health care reform plan, which would require all Americans to carry health insurance either through the government or a private insurer.
“He’s wrong,” said Michael Millenson, a visiting scholar at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. “Well, it’s not that Bill Clinton is wrong, it’s that he’s quoting a piece of research which is wrong.”
Clinton’s reference was to a Harvard University study of medical bankruptcy that is widely quoted, including by Democratic presidential candidates John Edwards and Barack Obama.
Harvard professors David Himmelstein and Elizabeth Warren interviewed more than 1,700 families that were in bankruptcy courts across the country. About half of all families filing for bankruptcy did so in the aftermath of a serious medical problem, according to the findings, released in 2005.
But that figure was disputed by Millenson and Northwestern University professor David Dranove, who re-examined the study at the behest of the insurance industry. They said medical bills were a contributing factor in just 17 percent of the bankruptcies. And the Harvard researchers didn’t rule out other factors, such as job loss, college loans or housing costs, they found.
“Using their numbers is both factually inaccurate and politically unfortunate,” Millenson, an Obama supporter and volunteer, said in an interview Monday. “President Clinton and Hillary Clinton have a wonderful track record for trying to cover the uninsured. But when you go beyond the facts allowed, you give ammunition to those who are trying to minimize the problem of the uninsured.”
Hillary Clinton’s Iowa spokesman, Mo Elleithee, pointed out that the Clinton, Obama and Edwards campaigns have all cited this fact, and that it came from “a well-respected Harvard study.”
“I find it hard to believe that anyone would quarrel with the fact that skyrocketing health care costs have caused financial hardship for many American families,” Elleithee said. “That’s why Hillary Clinton has a plan to reduce health care costs while increasing both quality and access to all Americans.”
Himmelstein, reached by phone Monday at Harvard, said the study is accurate. The Northwestern academics misrepresented and manipulated the data, he said.
“President Clinton is correct,” Himmelstein said. “But he’s wrong in saying his wife’s plan would do something about it.”
Himmelstein is a passionate advocate for a system where the government insures everyone.
“I think Clinton’s plan is just an absolute fraud, and so is Edwards’ and Obama’s,” he said.
The “Swiss cheese coverage” of private insurance would still leave some Americans saddled with enormous bills, and those who lose their jobs would be particularly vulnerable to medical bankruptcy, he said.
Skip the back-and-forth, and these academics agree on some points. About 46 million Americans have no health insurance. And for the 250 million with insurance, high co-payments, deductibles and exclusions from coverage can harm their finances.
But the number of bankruptcies due to medical bills is unknown, said Millenson, who described himself and Dranove as “militant political moderates.”
Dranove recently started a year-long study on the issue, this time with a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.