1 December 2009 
Here is a quote from Leader Reid’s opening statement on the Senate floor yesterday:
Leader Reid: Is that a crisis in America? 750,000 people filing for bankruptcy and about 70 percent of them filing because of health care costs, with 62 percent of those who filed for bankruptcy because of health care costs having health insurance?
I have not checked the Leader’s numbers. I have been told they are overstated, but let’s take them as facts. That would mean that 525,000 people file for bankruptcy because of health care costs.
Let’s make a wildly overoptimistic assumption that this bill would prevent half of them from entering bankruptcy. That’s about 263,000 people.
Compare that to the 16 million people whom CBO says (in 2016) would remain uninsured and yet have to pay a penalty tax because they didn’t comply with the individual mandate.
For each person who would avoid bankruptcy as a result of this bill, more than 60 would remain uninsured and have to pay a penalty tax of almost $800 per year.
Is that worth it?
This seems a bit like a "devil's in the details" question, because it seems like a numerical answer is possible. The most outstanding question is "how many dollars would each bankruptcy-avoider be saving?", and comparing that to the $48,000 cost which is distributed among 60 people.
Naturally, it takes different amounts of debt to pressure different individuals into filing for bankruptcy, but it seems like, armed with your ratio of 60 uninsured penalty taxes for 1 avoided bankruptcy, a mean could be established.
Thanks for sharing; your posts are always an excellent, information, and thought-provoking read!
Maybe I missed something but isn't it fair to ask what this bill is going to do to prevent people who have insurance from going bankrupt? I suspect the answer from supporters of the bill is that it eliminates all of the maximums that exist in current policies. But these maximums have the affect of lowering premiums and allowing insurance companies to predict costs in such a way that they can stay in business. How is an insurance company, or anyone else for that matter, supposed to predict how much to charge for unlimited liabilities? Surely, it isn't going to be better if the insurance companies are the ones that go bankrupt. Wouldn't that impact even more people? That isn't going to help policy holders. But then we need to ask, what about bankrupting the country (that is if it isn't already)?
This congress seems to think that insurance companies can operate themselves like Medicare and commit themselves to payout unlimited amounts (is it presently estimated to be 37 trillion?) that they don't have.