Moving Forward on Basic Income

Re:Moving Forward on Basic Income by CWuestefeld on Tuesday May 31, 2016 @02:52PM (#11809049)

in the US, roughly 2 million people do [bankrupt due to medical bills] a year, and another 56 million struggle to pay their bills

This is misinterpreting the data. The vast majority of this is the problems caused by lost income - an inability to work while ill, not because of the medical bills themselves.

EDIT: remove repeated phrase

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Re:Moving Forward on Basic Income by wk_end on Tuesday May 31, 2016 @04:10PM (#11809783)

The press release for the original study this article is based on claims they've accounted for this:

"NerdWallet Health chose to include only bankruptcy explicitly tied to medical bills, excluding indirect reasons like lost work opportunities." [0]

https://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/health/managing-medical-bill...

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Re:Moving Forward on Basic Income by CWuestefeld on Tuesday May 31, 2016 @04:57PM (#11810173)

I guess I should knuckle down and look at the survey methodology to see for sure. But given my time constraints, I'll just note that while I acknowledge the ambiguity, I read that statement as closer to "we don't count people that missed out on a better job or promotion" (emphasizing the word "opportunity", I guess), rather than saying "we discounted all foregone income".

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