medical bankruptcy

14 results back to index

Practical Doomsday: A User's Guide to the End of the World by Michal Zalewski

accounting loophole / creative accounting, AI winter, anti-communist, artificial general intelligence, bank run, big-box store, bitcoin, blockchain, book value, Buy land – they’re not making it any more, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Carrington event, clean water, coronavirus, corporate governance, COVID-19, cryptocurrency, David Graeber, decentralized internet, deep learning, distributed ledger, diversification, diversified portfolio, Dogecoin, dumpster diving, failed state, fiat currency, financial independence, financial innovation, fixed income, Fractional reserve banking, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Haber-Bosch Process, housing crisis, index fund, indoor plumbing, information security, inventory management, Iridium satellite, Joan Didion, John Bogle, large denomination, lifestyle creep, mass immigration, McDonald's hot coffee lawsuit, McMansion, medical bankruptcy, Modern Monetary Theory, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, moral panic, non-fungible token, nuclear winter, off-the-grid, Oklahoma City bombing, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, paperclip maximiser, passive investing, peak oil, planetary scale, ransomware, restrictive zoning, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk tolerance, Ronald Reagan, Satoshi Nakamoto, Savings and loan crisis, self-driving car, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, supervolcano, systems thinking, tech worker, Ted Kaczynski, TED Talk, Tunguska event, underbanked, urban sprawl, Wall-E, zero-sum game, zoonotic diseases

Ruiz, “World’s Population Is Projected to Nearly Stop Growing by the End of the Century,” Pew Research Center, June 17, 2019, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/06/17/worlds-population-is-projected-to-nearly-stop-growing-by-the-end-of-the-century/. Chapter 2 1. Kimberly Amadeo, “Medical Bankruptcy and the Economy,” The Balance, November 19, 2019, https://www.thebalance.com/medical-bankruptcy-statistics-4154729/. 2. Salvador Rizzo, “Sanders’s Flawed Statistic: 500,000 Medical Bankruptcies a Year,” Washington Post, August 28, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/08/28/sanderss-flawed-statistic-medical-bankruptcies-year/. 3. Sheyna Steiner, “Survey: How Americans Contend with Unexpected Expenses,” Bankrate, January 6, 2016, https://www.bankrate.com/banking/savings/survey-how-americans-contend-with-unexpected-expenses/. 4.

The Unbanking of America: How the New Middle Class Survives by Lisa Servon

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, basic income, behavioural economics, Build a better mousetrap, business cycle, Cass Sunstein, choice architecture, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, cross-border payments, do well by doing good, employer provided health coverage, financial exclusion, financial independence, financial innovation, gender pay gap, gentrification, George Akerlof, gig economy, Glass-Steagall Act, income inequality, independent contractor, informal economy, Jane Jacobs, Joseph Schumpeter, late fees, low interest rates, Lyft, M-Pesa, medical bankruptcy, microcredit, Occupy movement, payday loans, peer-to-peer lending, precariat, Ralph Nader, Richard Thaler, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, sharing economy, subprime mortgage crisis, too big to fail, transaction costs, unbanked and underbanked, underbanked, universal basic income, Unsafe at Any Speed, We are the 99%, white flight, working poor, Zipcar

By 2009, it had climbed: Index Credit Cards, “Credit Card Late Fees Average $34.09, Over-the-Limit Fees Average $36.53,” indexcreditcards.com, October 6, 2009. http://www.indexcreditcards.com/creditcardlatefees/ 69 “bring money out of the shadows”: Bari Tessler Linden, “The Antidote to Money Shame,” Bari Tessler Linden blog, November 7, 2013. http://baritessler.com/2013/11/money-shame/ “flip your rich switch”: Nan Akasha, “Money Archetypes and Guilt and Shame,” Nan Akasha blog, May 29, 2012. http://www.nanakasha.com/money-archetypes-guilt-shame rise in bankruptcy filings: Jill Lepore, “The Warren Brief,” The New Yorker, April 21, 2014. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/04/21/the-warren-brief left one partner economically: David Himmelstein et al., “Medical Bankruptcy in the United States, 2007: Results of a National Study,” American Journal of Medicine, vol. 22, no. 9 (August 2009). http://www.amjmed.com/article/S0002-9343(09)00404-5/pdf cut down on abusive: Kathleen Day, “Bankruptcy Bill Passes; Bush Expected to Sign,” Washington Post, April 15, 2005. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A53688-2005Apr14.html 70 claims about bankruptcy fraud: Ibid.; Lepore, “The Warren Brief.”

…

“The Surprising and Smart Reason Millennials Love Payday Loans and Prepaid Debit Cards.” Forbes, February 22, 2014. The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. “Pulling It Together: The Most Popular Provision in the ACA?” Washington, DC: The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, 2011. Himmelstein, David, Deborah Thorne, Elizabeth Warren, and Steffie Woolhandler. “Medical Bankruptcy in the United States, 2007: Results of a National Study.” American Journal of Medicine, vol. 22, no. 9 (2009). Huang, Daniel. “New Rules Will Change How Bank Uses Information from Reporting Agency.” Wall Street Journal, January 27, 2015. Independent Community Bankers of America. “The 2014 ICBA American Millennials and Community Banking Study.”

Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy by Cathy O'Neil

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alan Greenspan, algorithmic bias, Bernie Madoff, big data - Walmart - Pop Tarts, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, carried interest, cloud computing, collateralized debt obligation, correlation does not imply causation, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, crowdsourcing, data science, disinformation, electronic logging device, Emanuel Derman, financial engineering, Financial Modelers Manifesto, Glass-Steagall Act, housing crisis, I will remember that I didn’t make the world, and it doesn’t satisfy my equations, Ida Tarbell, illegal immigration, Internet of things, late fees, low interest rates, machine readable, mass incarceration, medical bankruptcy, Moneyball by Michael Lewis explains big data, new economy, obamacare, Occupy movement, offshore financial centre, payday loans, peer-to-peer lending, Peter Thiel, Ponzi scheme, prediction markets, price discrimination, quantitative hedge fund, Ralph Nader, RAND corporation, real-name policy, recommendation engine, Rubik’s Cube, Salesforce, Sharpe ratio, statistical model, tech worker, Tim Cook: Apple, too big to fail, Unsafe at Any Speed, Upton Sinclair, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, working poor

A 2012 survey on credit card debt: Amy Traub, “Discredited: How Employment Credit Checks Keep Qualified Workers Out of a Job,” Demos, February 2013, www.​demos.​org/​sites/​default/​files/​publications/​Discredited-​Demos.​pdf. the single biggest cause of bankruptcies: Christina LaMontagne, “NerdWallet Health Finds Medical Bankruptcy Accounts for Majority of Personal Bankruptcies,” NerdWallet, March 26, 2014, www.​nerdwallet.​com/​blog/​health/​medical-​costs/​medical-​bankruptcy/. white households held on average: Tami Luhby, “The Black-White Economic Divide in 5 Charts,” CNN Money, November 25, 2015, http://​money.​cnn.​com/​2015/​11/​24/​news/​economy/​blacks-​whites-​inequality/. only 15 percent of whites: Rakesh Kochhar, Richard Fry, and Paul Taylor, “Wealth Gaps Rise to Record Highs Between Whites, Blacks, Hispanics: Twenty-to-One,” Pew Research Center, July 26, 2011, www.​pewsocialtrends.​org/​2011/​07/​26/​wealth-​gaps-​rise-​to-​record-​highs-​between-​whites-​blacks-​hispanics/.

The New Class Conflict by Joel Kotkin

2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alvin Toffler, American Society of Civil Engineers: Report Card, back-to-the-city movement, Bob Noyce, Boston Dynamics, California gold rush, Californian Ideology, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon footprint, classic study, Cornelius Vanderbilt, creative destruction, crony capitalism, David Graeber, degrowth, deindustrialization, do what you love, don't be evil, Downton Abbey, driverless car, Edward Glaeser, Elon Musk, energy security, falling living standards, future of work, Future Shock, Gini coefficient, Google bus, Herman Kahn, housing crisis, income inequality, independent contractor, informal economy, Internet of things, Jane Jacobs, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, job automation, John Markoff, John von Neumann, Joseph Schumpeter, Kevin Kelly, Kevin Roose, labor-force participation, Larry Ellison, Lewis Mumford, low interest rates, low-wage service sector, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Mary Meeker, mass affluent, McJob, McMansion, medical bankruptcy, microapartment, Nate Silver, National Debt Clock, New Economic Geography, new economy, New Urbanism, obamacare, offshore financial centre, Paul Buchheit, payday loans, Peter Calthorpe, plutocrats, post-industrial society, public intellectual, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, rent control, rent-seeking, Report Card for America’s Infrastructure, Richard Florida, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Silicon Valley ideology, Solyndra, Steve Jobs, stock buybacks, tech worker, techlash, technoutopianism, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Thomas L Friedman, Tony Fadell, too big to fail, transcontinental railway, trickle-down economics, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, upwardly mobile, urban planning, urban sprawl, Virgin Galactic, War on Poverty, women in the workforce, working poor, young professional

Hewitt, “After Obamacare,” Washington Monthly, January/February 2014, p. 39. Dan Mangan, “Medical Bills Are the Biggest Cause of U.S. Bankruptcies: Study,” CNBC.com, June 25, 2013, http://www.cnbc.com/id/100840148; Christina LaMontagne, “NerdWallet Health finds Medical Bankruptcy Accounts for Majority of Personal Bankruptcies,” NerdWallet, March 26, 2014, http://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/health/2014/03/26/medical-bankruptcy. 47. Ronald Brownstein, “Eclipsed,” National Journal, May 28, 2011, http://www.nationaljournal.com/columns/political-connections/white-working-class-americans-see-future-as-gloomy-20110526; Ronald Brownstein, “Meet the New Middle Class: Who They Are, What They Want, and What They Fear,” Atlantic, April 25, 2013, http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/04/meet-the-new-middle-class-who-they-are-what-they-want-and-what-they-fear/275307; Phil Izzo, “Bleak News for Americans’ Income,” Wall Street Journal, October 14, 2011. 48.

Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus: How Growth Became the Enemy of Prosperity by Douglas Rushkoff

activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, algorithmic trading, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Andrew Keen, bank run, banking crisis, barriers to entry, benefit corporation, bitcoin, blockchain, Burning Man, business process, buy and hold, buy low sell high, California gold rush, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon footprint, centralized clearinghouse, citizen journalism, clean water, cloud computing, collaborative economy, collective bargaining, colonial exploitation, Community Supported Agriculture, corporate personhood, corporate raider, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, data science, deep learning, disintermediation, diversified portfolio, Dutch auction, Elon Musk, Erik Brynjolfsson, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, fiat currency, Firefox, Flash crash, full employment, future of work, gamification, Garrett Hardin, gentrification, gig economy, Gini coefficient, global supply chain, global village, Google bus, Howard Rheingold, IBM and the Holocaust, impulse control, income inequality, independent contractor, index fund, iterative process, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, jimmy wales, job automation, Joseph Schumpeter, Kickstarter, Large Hadron Collider, loss aversion, low interest rates, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, market bubble, market fundamentalism, Marshall McLuhan, means of production, medical bankruptcy, minimum viable product, Mitch Kapor, Naomi Klein, Network effects, new economy, Norbert Wiener, Oculus Rift, passive investing, payday loans, peer-to-peer lending, Peter Thiel, post-industrial society, power law, profit motive, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, recommendation engine, reserve currency, RFID, Richard Stallman, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, Russell Brand, Satoshi Nakamoto, Second Machine Age, shareholder value, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Snapchat, social graph, software patent, Steve Jobs, stock buybacks, TaskRabbit, the Cathedral and the Bazaar, The Future of Employment, the long tail, trade route, Tragedy of the Commons, transportation-network company, Turing test, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, unpaid internship, Vitalik Buterin, warehouse robotics, Wayback Machine, Y Combinator, young professional, zero-sum game, Zipcar

David Johnston, Sam Onat Yilmaz, Jeremy Kandah, Nikos Bentenitis, Farzad Hashemi, Ron Gross, Shawn Wilkinson, and Steven Mason, “The General Theory of Decentralized Applications, Dapps,” github.com, June 9, 2014. 44. Nakamoto, “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System.” 45. National Patient Advocate Foundation, “Issue Brief: Medical Debt, Medical Bankruptcy and the Impact on Patients,” npaf.org, September 2012. 46. Dan Mangan, “Medical Bills Are the Biggest Cause of US Bankruptcies: Study,” cnbc.com, June 25, 2013. 47. National Patient Advocate Foundation, “Issue Brief: Medical Debt, Medical Bankruptcy and the Impact on Patients.” 48. rollingjubilee.org. 49. Interview with Astra Taylor, cofounder of Strike Debt and the Rolling Jubilee, conducted by e-mail, July 24, 2015. 50.

The Viral Underclass: The Human Toll When Inequality and Disease Collide by Steven W. Thrasher

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Bernie Sanders, Black Lives Matter, California gold rush, carbon footprint, Chelsea Manning, clean water, contact tracing, coronavirus, COVID-19, critical race theory, crowdsourcing, David Graeber, deindustrialization, Donald Trump, drug harm reduction, East Village, Edward Jenner, ending welfare as we know it, European colonialism, Ferguson, Missouri, food desert, gentrification, George Floyd, global pandemic, informal economy, lockdown, Louis Pasteur, mandatory minimum, mass incarceration, means of production, medical bankruptcy, moral panic, Naomi Klein, obamacare, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, peak TV, pill mill, QR code, RAND corporation, Ronald Reagan, San Francisco homelessness, Saturday Night Live, Scramble for Africa, Silicon Valley, social distancing, the built environment, transatlantic slave trade, transcontinental railway, Upton Sinclair, War on Poverty, white flight, working poor

with medical debt: Lorie Konish, “137 Million Americans Are Struggling with Medical Debts: Here’s What to Know If You Need Some Relief,” CNBC, November 10, 2019, https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/10/americans-are-drowning-in-medical-debt-what-to-know-if-you-need-help.html. bankruptcies in the United States: Kimberly Amadeo, “Medical Bankruptcy and the Economy,” Balance, April 30, 2021, https://www.thebalance.com/medical-bankruptcy-statistics-4154729. nation on the planet: Rabah Kamal, Giorlando Ramirez, and Cynthia Cox, “How Does Health Spending in the U.S. Compare to Other Countries?” Health System Tracker, Peterson-KFF, December 23, 2020, https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/health-spending-u-s-compare-countries/#item-spendingcomparison_gdp-per-capita-and-health-consumption-spending-per-capita-2019.

This Could Be Our Future: A Manifesto for a More Generous World by Yancey Strickler

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, Abraham Maslow, accelerated depreciation, Adam Curtis, basic income, benefit corporation, Big Tech, big-box store, business logic, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Cass Sunstein, cognitive dissonance, corporate governance, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, data science, David Graeber, Donald Trump, Doomsday Clock, Dutch auction, effective altruism, Elon Musk, financial independence, gender pay gap, gentrification, global supply chain, Hacker News, housing crisis, Ignaz Semmelweis: hand washing, invention of the printing press, invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, job automation, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Nash: game theory, Joi Ito, Joseph Schumpeter, Kickstarter, Kōnosuke Matsushita, Larry Ellison, Louis Pasteur, Mark Zuckerberg, medical bankruptcy, Mr. Money Mustache, new economy, Oculus Rift, off grid, offshore financial centre, Parker Conrad, Ralph Nader, RAND corporation, Richard Thaler, Ronald Reagan, Rutger Bregman, self-driving car, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, Snapchat, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, Solyndra, stem cell, Steve Jobs, stock buybacks, TechCrunch disrupt, TED Talk, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Travis Kalanick, Tyler Cowen, universal basic income, white flight, Zenefits

how we think: Dan Ariely writes about our emotions’ effect on our choices in his 2008 book Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions. 62 percent of personal bankruptcies: 62 percent of American bankruptcies are caused by medical bills according to a 2009 report published in the American Journal of Medicine (“Medical Bankruptcy in the United States, 2007: Results of a National Study” by David U. Himmelstein, Deborah Thorne, Elizabeth Warren, and Steffie Woolhandler). reap growing profits: Examples of companies raising drug prices of existing drugs include the EpiPen, insulin (by three major manufacturers), and Daraprim.

MacroWikinomics: Rebooting Business and the World by Don Tapscott, Anthony D. Williams

"World Economic Forum" Davos, accounting loophole / creative accounting, airport security, Andrew Keen, augmented reality, Ayatollah Khomeini, barriers to entry, Ben Horowitz, bioinformatics, blood diamond, Bretton Woods, business climate, business process, buy and hold, car-free, carbon footprint, carbon tax, Charles Lindbergh, citizen journalism, Clayton Christensen, clean water, Climategate, Climatic Research Unit, cloud computing, collaborative editing, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, colonial rule, commoditize, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, death of newspapers, demographic transition, digital capitalism, digital divide, disruptive innovation, distributed generation, do well by doing good, don't be evil, en.wikipedia.org, energy security, energy transition, Evgeny Morozov, Exxon Valdez, failed state, fault tolerance, financial innovation, Galaxy Zoo, game design, global village, Google Earth, Hans Rosling, hive mind, Home mortgage interest deduction, information asymmetry, interchangeable parts, Internet of things, invention of movable type, Isaac Newton, James Watt: steam engine, Jaron Lanier, jimmy wales, Joseph Schumpeter, Julian Assange, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, machine readable, Marc Andreessen, Marshall McLuhan, mass immigration, medical bankruptcy, megacity, military-industrial complex, mortgage tax deduction, Netflix Prize, new economy, Nicholas Carr, ocean acidification, off-the-grid, oil shock, old-boy network, online collectivism, open borders, open economy, pattern recognition, peer-to-peer lending, personalized medicine, radical decentralization, Ray Kurzweil, RFID, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, Rubik’s Cube, scientific mainstream, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Skype, smart grid, smart meter, social graph, social web, software patent, Steve Jobs, synthetic biology, systems thinking, text mining, the long tail, the scientific method, The Wisdom of Crowds, transaction costs, transfer pricing, University of East Anglia, urban sprawl, value at risk, WikiLeaks, X Prize, Yochai Benkler, young professional, Zipcar

Ken Terry, “Health Spending Hits 17.3 Percent of GDP In Largest Annual Jump,” B Net (February 4, 2010). 8. “Life Expectancy at Birth,” CIO World Factbook. See: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2102rank.html. 9. D. U. Himmelstein, D. Thorne, E. Warren, et al., “Medical bankruptcy in the United States, 2007: Results of a national study,” The American Journal of Medicine (August 2009). 10. Karen Pallarito, “Government to Pay for More Than Half of U.S. Health Care Costs,” U.S. News (February 4, 2010). 11. Geoffrey Lean, “Water scarcity ‘now bigger threat than financial crisis,’” The Independent (March 15, 2009). 12.

…

“Health care spending in Canada to exceed $180 billion this year,” Canadian Institute for Health Information (November 19, 2009). 6. Robert Kelley, “Where Can $700 Billion In Waste Be Cut Annually From The U.S. Healthcare System?” Thomson Reuters (October 27, 2009). 7. D. Himmelstein, D. Thorne, E. Warren, et al., ”Medical bankruptcy in the United States, 2007: results of a national study,” American Journal of Medicine (August 2009). 8. J. Lubitz and G. Riley, “Trends in Medicare payments in the last year of life,” New England Journal of Medicine (April 1993). 9. Greg Keller, “US Tops World in Health Care Spending, Results Lag,” ABC News (December 8, 2009). 10.

A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America by Bruce Cannon Gibney

1960s counterculture, 2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alan Greenspan, AlphaGo, American Society of Civil Engineers: Report Card, Bear Stearns, Bernie Madoff, Bernie Sanders, Black Lives Matter, bond market vigilante , book value, Boston Dynamics, Bretton Woods, business cycle, buy and hold, carbon footprint, carbon tax, Charles Lindbergh, classic study, cognitive dissonance, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, corporate personhood, Corrections Corporation of America, currency manipulation / currency intervention, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, dark matter, DeepMind, Deng Xiaoping, Donald Trump, Downton Abbey, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, ending welfare as we know it, equal pay for equal work, failed state, financial deregulation, financial engineering, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, future of work, gender pay gap, gig economy, Glass-Steagall Act, Haight Ashbury, Higgs boson, high-speed rail, Home mortgage interest deduction, Hyperloop, illegal immigration, impulse control, income inequality, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, James Carville said: "I would like to be reincarnated as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody.", Jane Jacobs, junk bonds, Kitchen Debate, labor-force participation, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, market bubble, mass immigration, mass incarceration, McMansion, medical bankruptcy, Menlo Park, Michael Milken, military-industrial complex, Mont Pelerin Society, moral hazard, mortgage debt, mortgage tax deduction, Neil Armstrong, neoliberal agenda, Network effects, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, obamacare, offshore financial centre, oil shock, operation paperclip, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, price stability, prosperity theology / prosperity gospel / gospel of success, quantitative easing, Ralph Waldo Emerson, RAND corporation, rent control, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk tolerance, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, Rubik’s Cube, Savings and loan crisis, school choice, secular stagnation, self-driving car, shareholder value, short selling, side project, Silicon Valley, smart grid, Snapchat, source of truth, stem cell, Steve Jobs, Stewart Brand, stock buybacks, survivorship bias, TaskRabbit, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tim Cook: Apple, too big to fail, War on Poverty, warehouse robotics, We are all Keynesians now, white picket fence, Whole Earth Catalog, women in the workforce, Y2K, Yom Kippur War, zero-sum game

A large minority of bankruptcies come from catastrophic health-care costs, and some of these can (and, as an accounting matter, are) just written off as bad luck. Nevertheless, medical bankruptcies have their own sociopathic aspects, given the Boomers’ lackadaisical attitudes toward their own physical and financial health, and their failure to enact comprehensive insurance reform. And much of the dollar volume of bankruptcies derives from nonmedical imprudence. The Boomers made mistakes and crafted remedial laws in response; with their errors absolved, bankruptcy reform can trend toward the punitive, except, of course, in the case of medical bankruptcies, where we can expect the Boomers to indulge in more legislative forgiveness.

Private Island: Why Britain Now Belongs to Someone Else by James Meek

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Berlin Wall, business continuity plan, call centre, clean water, Deng Xiaoping, electricity market, Etonian, Ford Model T, gentrification, HESCO bastion, housing crisis, illegal immigration, land bank, Leo Hollis, Martin Wolf, medical bankruptcy, Mikhail Gorbachev, post-industrial society, pre–internet, price mechanism, Right to Buy, risk tolerance, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, Rubik’s Cube, Skype, sovereign wealth fund, vertical integration, Washington Consensus, working poor

In his paper ‘Sick and (Still) Broke’, the lawyer Ryan Sugden points out that while the ACA puts a helpful cap on copayments, it doesn’t eliminate them, and does little to help people who have to quit work through their or a child’s illness. ‘While the Affordable Care Act will reduce the overall number of bankruptcies, and arguably eliminate the most morally objectionable causes of medical bankruptcy, in a system based on market principles there will – and must – be consumers whose own bad choices spell financial trouble,’ he writes. ‘For society to “win” and receive the benefits of a consumer-driven system, there must be some who “lose”.’ Latest figures from the OECD and the World Health Organisation suggest that the US spends 2.4 times more on health per person than Britain, yet Britons live slightly longer, on average, than Americans.

Third World America: How Our Politicians Are Abandoning the Middle Class and Betraying the American Dream by Arianna Huffington

Alan Greenspan, American Society of Civil Engineers: Report Card, Apollo 13, Bear Stearns, Bernie Madoff, Bernie Sanders, call centre, carried interest, citizen journalism, clean water, collateralized debt obligation, Cornelius Vanderbilt, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, crony capitalism, David Brooks, do what you love, extreme commuting, Exxon Valdez, full employment, Glass-Steagall Act, greed is good, Greenspan put, guns versus butter model, high-speed rail, housing crisis, immigration reform, invisible hand, knowledge economy, laissez-faire capitalism, late fees, low interest rates, market bubble, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, medical bankruptcy, microcredit, military-industrial complex, Neil Armstrong, new economy, New Journalism, offshore financial centre, Ponzi scheme, post-work, proprietary trading, Report Card for America’s Infrastructure, Richard Florida, Ronald Reagan, Rosa Parks, Savings and loan crisis, single-payer health, smart grid, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Timothy McVeigh, too big to fail, transcontinental railway, trickle-down economics, winner-take-all economy, working poor, Works Progress Administration

Our elected leaders utterly ignored the fact that the vast majority of people who file for bankruptcy are middle-class folks who can’t pay their bills because they’ve lost their jobs or been hit with high medical bills. In fact, a 2009 study by researchers at Harvard and Ohio University showed that healthcare problems were the root cause of 62 percent of all personal bankruptcies in America in 2007.75 Using that rate, roughly 900,000 of 2009’s 1.4 million bankruptcy filings were medical bankruptcies.76 Or, to put it another way: Just over every thirty seconds someone in this country files for bankruptcy in the wake of a serious illness. How’s that for a shocking stat? Here’s another: 78 percent of the so-called medically bankrupt had health insurance at the time of their illness.77 It just wasn’t enough to cover the dramatic rise in health-care costs.

Work Optional: Retire Early the Non-Penny-Pinching Way by Tanja Hester

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, anti-work, antiwork, asset allocation, barriers to entry, buy and hold, crowdsourcing, diversification, estate planning, financial independence, full employment, General Magic , gig economy, hedonic treadmill, high net worth, independent contractor, index fund, labor-force participation, lifestyle creep, longitudinal study, low interest rates, medical bankruptcy, mortgage debt, Mr. Money Mustache, multilevel marketing, obamacare, passive income, post-work, remote working, rent control, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk tolerance, robo advisor, side hustle, stocks for the long run, tech worker, Vanguard fund, work culture

Maintain the Right Insurance While insurance is not a guarantee that you’ll never have large, out-of-pocket expenses, carrying the right insurance in early retirement will insulate you financially against some of the worst challenges. We’ve discussed at length the importance of maintaining excellent health insurance. According to Families USA, two-thirds of medical bankruptcies happen among people with health insurance—and that’s a stat that reflects the passage of the Affordable Care Act, when many more people are insured now. It’s a critical reminder not just to stay insured but also to keep yourself protected by solid insurance with good coverage levels and a reasonable out-of-pocket maximum that you could theoretically afford to pay every year.

Emotional Labor: The Invisible Work Shaping Our Lives and How to Claim Our Power by Rose Hackman

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, basic income, behavioural economics, Black Lives Matter, cognitive load, collective bargaining, coronavirus, COVID-19, dark triade / dark tetrad, David Graeber, demand response, do what you love, Donald Trump, Downton Abbey, emotional labour, equal pay for equal work, European colonialism, Ferguson, Missouri, financial independence, game design, glass ceiling, immigration reform, invisible hand, job automation, lockdown, mass incarceration, medical bankruptcy, meta-analysis, Nelson Mandela, performance metric, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Snapchat, social distancing, TED Talk, The Great Resignation, TikTok, transatlantic slave trade, universal basic income, W. E. B. Du Bois, wages for housework, women in the workforce, working poor, zero-sum game

“GDP (Current US$),” World Bank, accessed March 27, 2022, https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD; https://databank.worldbank.org/data/download/GDP.pdf.   4.  Anshu Siripurapu, “The U.S. Inequality Debate,” Council on Foreign Relations, last updated April 20, 2022, accessed March 27, 2022, https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/us-inequality-debate.   5.  David U. Himmelstein et al., “Medical Bankruptcy: Still Common Despite the Affordable Care Act,” American Journal of Public Health 109, no. 3 (March 1, 2019): 431–33, https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2018.304901.   6.  Gina Martinez, “GoFundMe CEO: One-Third of Fundraisers Are for Medical Costs,” Time, updated January 30, 2019, accessed May 11, 2021, https://time.com/5516037/gofundme-medical-bills-one-third-ceo/.   7.  

Forward: Notes on the Future of Our Democracy by Andrew Yang

2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Amazon Web Services, American Society of Civil Engineers: Report Card, basic income, benefit corporation, Bernie Sanders, blockchain, blue-collar work, call centre, centre right, clean water, contact tracing, coronavirus, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, data is the new oil, data science, deepfake, disinformation, Donald Trump, facts on the ground, fake news, forensic accounting, future of work, George Floyd, gig economy, global pandemic, income inequality, independent contractor, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, job automation, Kevin Roose, labor-force participation, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, medical bankruptcy, new economy, obamacare, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, pez dispenser, QAnon, recommendation engine, risk tolerance, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, Rutger Bregman, Sam Altman, Saturday Night Live, shareholder value, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, single-payer health, Snapchat, social distancing, SoftBank, surveillance capitalism, systematic bias, tech billionaire, TED Talk, The Day the Music Died, the long tail, TikTok, universal basic income, winner-take-all economy, working poor

Prescription drug use American Psychological Association, “Mental Health Issues Increased Significantly in Young Adults over Last Decade,” ScienceDaily, March 15, 2019. Deaths of despair Steven H. Woolf and Heidi Schoomaker, “Life Expectancy and Mortality Rates in the United States, 1959–2017,” JAMA, Nov. 26, 2019. Health-care costs have Julio C. Ramos et al., “Medical Bankruptcy: Still Common Despite the Affordable Care Act,” American Journal of Public Health 109, no. 3 (March 2019): 431–33. Here are some of the indicators Katherine Gehl and Michael Porter, The Politics Industry: How Political Innovation Can Break Partisan Gridlock and Save Our Democracy (Boston: Harvard Business Review Press, 2020), 81.

Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer-And Turned Its Back on the Middle Class by Paul Pierson, Jacob S. Hacker

accounting loophole / creative accounting, active measures, affirmative action, air traffic controllers' union, Alan Greenspan, asset allocation, barriers to entry, Bear Stearns, Bonfire of the Vanities, business climate, business cycle, carried interest, Cass Sunstein, clean water, collective bargaining, corporate governance, Credit Default Swap, David Brooks, desegregation, employer provided health coverage, financial deregulation, financial innovation, financial intermediation, fixed income, full employment, Glass-Steagall Act, Home mortgage interest deduction, Howard Zinn, income inequality, invisible hand, John Bogle, knowledge economy, laissez-faire capitalism, Martin Wolf, medical bankruptcy, moral hazard, Nate Silver, new economy, night-watchman state, offshore financial centre, oil shock, Paul Volcker talking about ATMs, Powell Memorandum, Ralph Nader, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Tax Reform Act of 1986, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, three-martini lunch, too big to fail, trickle-down economics, union organizing, very high income, War on Poverty, winner-take-all economy, women in the workforce

Economic Mobility Initiative: An Initiative of the Pew Charitable Trusts (February 2008). 17 Wojciech Kopczuk, Emmanuel Saez, and Jae Song, “Uncovering the American Dream: Inequality and Mobility in Social Security Earnings Data Since 1937,” National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Working Paper No. 13345 (August 2007), 14, 40. 18 Miles Corak, “Chasing the Same Dream, Climbing Different Ladders: Economic Mobility in the United States and Canada,” Economic Mobility Initiative: An Initiative of the Pew Charitable Trusts (January 2009), 7. 19 See table 3.13: Change in Private Sector Employer-Provided Pension Coverage, 1979–2006 in Lawrence Mishel, Jared Bernstein, and Heidi Shierholz, The State of Working America 2008/2009 (Cornell: Cornell University Press, 2008). 20 Jack VanDerhei, Sarah Holden, and Luis Alonso, “401(k) Plan Asset Allocation, Account Balances, and Loan Activity in 2008,” Employee Benefit Research Institute No. 335 (October 2009): 16. 21 Alicia H. Munnell, Anthony Webb, and Francesca Golub-Sass, “The National Retirement Risk Index: After the Crash,” Center for Retirement Research at Boston College Brief No. 9–22 (October 2009). 22 David Himmelstein, Deborah Thorne, Elizabeth Warren, and Steffie Woolhandler, “Medical Bankruptcy in the United States, 2007: Results of a National Study,” American Journal of Medicine 122: 8 (2007): 741–746. 23 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, OECD Health Data 2009—Frequently Requested Data (November 2009), http://www.irdes.fr/EcoSante/DownLoad/OECDHealthData_FrequentlyRequestedData.xls. 24 Jacob S.

The Ones We've Been Waiting For: How a New Generation of Leaders Will Transform America by Charlotte Alter

"Hurricane Katrina" Superdome, "World Economic Forum" Davos, 4chan, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, basic income, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, carbon footprint, carbon tax, clean water, collective bargaining, Columbine, corporate personhood, correlation does not imply causation, Credit Default Swap, crowdsourcing, data science, David Brooks, deepfake, deplatforming, disinformation, Donald Trump, double helix, East Village, ending welfare as we know it, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, feminist movement, Ferguson, Missouri, financial deregulation, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, gentrification, gig economy, glass ceiling, Glass-Steagall Act, Google Hangouts, green new deal, Greta Thunberg, housing crisis, illegal immigration, immigration reform, income inequality, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), job-hopping, Kevin Kelly, knowledge economy, Lyft, mandatory minimum, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, mass incarceration, McMansion, medical bankruptcy, microaggression, move fast and break things, Nate Silver, obamacare, Occupy movement, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, passive income, pre–internet, race to the bottom, RAND corporation, Ronald Reagan, sexual politics, Sheryl Sandberg, side hustle, Silicon Valley, single-payer health, Snapchat, Social Justice Warrior, Steve Bannon, TaskRabbit, tech bro, too big to fail, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, universal basic income, unpaid internship, We are the 99%, white picket fence, working poor, Works Progress Administration

If the president had held out for a public option, Eric knew, he likely would have walked away empty-handed. The Affordable Care Act was a huge win for the public: it prohibited insurance companies from applying lifetime caps on coverage or discriminating against people with preexisting conditions, which helped cut medical bankruptcies in half; greatly expanded Medicaid so millions more low-income people could get coverage; and allowed young people to stay on their parents’ health insurance until they were twenty-six (which was especially helpful to underemployed millennials for whom employer-sponsored health insurance seemed like an impossible luxury).

The Price of Inequality: How Today's Divided Society Endangers Our Future by Joseph E. Stiglitz

affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, airline deregulation, Alan Greenspan, Andrei Shleifer, banking crisis, barriers to entry, Basel III, battle of ideas, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, business cycle, capital controls, Carmen Reinhart, Cass Sunstein, central bank independence, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collective bargaining, colonial rule, corporate governance, Credit Default Swap, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, Dava Sobel, declining real wages, deskilling, electricity market, Exxon Valdez, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial deregulation, financial innovation, Flash crash, framing effect, full employment, George Akerlof, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, Great Leap Forward, income inequality, income per capita, indoor plumbing, inflation targeting, information asymmetry, invisible hand, jobless men, John Bogle, John Harrison: Longitude, John Markoff, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, Kenneth Arrow, Kenneth Rogoff, London Interbank Offered Rate, lone genius, low interest rates, low skilled workers, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, market bubble, market fundamentalism, mass incarceration, medical bankruptcy, microcredit, moral hazard, mortgage tax deduction, negative equity, obamacare, offshore financial centre, paper trading, Pareto efficiency, patent troll, Paul Samuelson, Paul Volcker talking about ATMs, payday loans, Phillips curve, price stability, profit maximization, profit motive, public intellectual, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, rent-seeking, reserve currency, Richard Thaler, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, search costs, shareholder value, short selling, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, spectrum auction, Steve Jobs, stock buybacks, subprime mortgage crisis, technology bubble, The Chicago School, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, The Myth of the Rational Market, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail, trade liberalization, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, trickle-down economics, ultimatum game, uranium enrichment, very high income, We are the 99%, wealth creators, women in the workforce, zero-sum game

Furthermore, “most medical debtors were well educated, owned homes, and had middle-class occupations. Three quarters had health insurance. Using identical definitions, between 2001 and 2007, the share of bankruptcies attributable to medical problems rose by 49.6%.” D. Himmelstein, D. Thorne, E. Warren, and S. Woolhandler, “Medical Bankruptcy in the United States, 2007: Results of a National Study,” American Journal of Medicine 122, no. 8 (2009): 741–46. In terms of getting at a more causal measure, i.e., estimating the direct effect of a health shock on the decision of whether or not to declare bankruptcy, Gross and Notowidigdo find “that out-of-pocket medical costs are pivotal in roughly 26 percent of personal bankruptcies among low-income households.”

She Has Her Mother's Laugh by Carl Zimmer

23andMe, agricultural Revolution, Anthropocene, clean water, clockwatching, cloud computing, CRISPR, dark matter, data science, discovery of DNA, double helix, Drosophila, Easter island, Elon Musk, epigenetics, Fellow of the Royal Society, Flynn Effect, friendly fire, Gary Taubes, germ theory of disease, Gregor Mendel, Helicobacter pylori, Isaac Newton, James Webb Space Telescope, lolcat, longitudinal study, medical bankruptcy, meta-analysis, microbiome, moral panic, mouse model, New Journalism, out of africa, phenotype, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Recombinant DNA, Scientific racism, statistical model, stem cell, twin studies, W. E. B. Du Bois

They can pay for college test prep classes to increase the odds their children will get into good colleges. And if they do get in, their parents can cover more of their college tuitions. Poor parents have fewer means to prepare their children to get into college. Even if their children do get accepted, they have fewer funds, and they’re more vulnerable to layoffs or medical bankruptcy. Their children may graduate saddled with steep college debts or drop out before getting a degree. The gifts that children inherit can keep coming well into adulthood. Parents may help cover the cost of law school, or write a check to help out with a septic tank that failed just after their children bought their first house.