Recording of Sam Maizel’s Discussion of Distressed Hospitals
A noted expert in the restructuring of health care business debts, both in and out of court, Sam Maizel treated Seton Hall to a one hour crash course on the fiscal crisis encountered by many of America’s hospitals. The significant financial hurdles that the hospital industry is facing has made the bankruptcy process that many hospitals encounter one of the fastest growing fields in health law.
Mr. Maizel has represented the federal government as a trial attorney in the U.S. Department of Justice’s Commercial Litigation Branch. He also served in the JAG Corps in Operation Desert Shield and Desert Storm after serving in the 101st Airborne Division and the 3rd US Infantry Regiment. Mr. Maizel now practices in Los Angeles for Pachulski Stang Ziehl & Jones LLP.
You can download Mr. Maizel’s talk here, or alternatively, you can stream it to your browser by clicking “Play” below:
Study: 62% of All Bankruptcies are Medical Related
photo by theamericanroadside via flickr
The Los Angeles Times and the Wall St. Journal Health Blog report that a new study by Harvard researchers shows that medical-related bankruptcies have increased. The researchers did a similar study for 2001 which found that medical bills, the loss of wages and cost of care attributed to illness contributed to 55% of bankruptcies. For 2007, the number is 62%.
Importantly, this rise in 2007 comes, as the study authors note, despite Congress having “tightened the bankruptcy laws” in 2005. In addition, the LA Times notes that “the latest study probably understates the current burden of medical expenses because it is based on bankruptcies filed before the recession hit.”
The WSJ Health Blog reports it thus:
Some 62% of all bankruptcies filed in 2007 were due in part to medical expenses, according to a new study. Even more striking: 78% of those individuals had insurance.
Most people hit by such bankruptcies were considered middle-class, college-educated and owned homes, according to the study published online by the American Journal of Medicine. By the time they filed bankruptcy, those without insurance reported average medical bills of $26,971 and those with insurance, expenses of $17,749.
The LA Times reports that
Hospital bills were the largest expense for about half the families that filed health-related bankruptcies.
It would be interesting to know what percentage of those hospital bills were claimed by nonprofit hospitals to be a “community benefit” under 501(c)(3).
Posts from Health Reform Watch have been cited by media sources throughout the country, including The New York Times, Washington Post, L.A. Times, Kaiser Health News, The Health Care Blog, NPR's Planet Money Blog, Duke Univ. Med. Center News, American Health Line Alerts, BusinessWeek.com, Concurring Opinions, Balkinization, The New England Journal of Medicine, Harvard's Nieman Foundation for Journalism, Las Vegas Sun, Maggie Mahar, Ezra Klein, Tom Geoghegan, and the official homepage of the Office of the Democratic Majority Leader of the House of Representatives, Steny Hoyer.
