Annie-Rose Strasser: Lead Health Care Reform Plaintiff Mary Brown Discharging Medical Debts Through Bankruptcy Blogging

Annie-Rose Strasser: Lead Health Care Reform Plaintiff Mary Brown Discharging Medical Debts Through Bankruptcy Blogging:

Yes, Mary Brown's inactivity in choosing not to buy health insurance for herself and her husband has already affected interstate commerce. Risk spreading via bankruptcy is a form of insurance, albeit not a very good form...

Annie-Rose Strasser:

Lead Plaintiff In Health Care Reform Case Filed Bankruptcy With Medical Debt: The lead plaintiff in the legal case against the Affordable Care Act filed for bankruptcy after accruing nearly $5,000 in medical debt…. Brown, reached by telephone Thursday, said the medical bills were her husband’s. “I always paid my bills, as well as my medical bills,” she said angrily. “I never said medical insurance is not a necessity. It should be anyone’s right to what kind of health insurance they have. “I believe that anyone has unforeseen things that happen to them that are beyond their control,” Brown said. “Who says I don’t have insurance right now?”

Brown “doesn’t have insurance. She doesn’t want to pay for it. And she doesn’t want the government to tell her she has to have it,” according to Karen Harned, a lawyer for the National Federation of Independent Business….

Sixty-two percent of people who file for personal bankruptcy do so because of medical bills, placing those debt burdens on the American taxpayer. And while Brown’s husband may have run up his medical bills, others take the less medically responsible road and decline preventive treatment so they can avoid high medical bills in the short term (but risk more problems later)…. [T]he plans people chose, or their choice not to have one, affects everyone…