As Americans begin to demand serious health care reform, insurance companies and creditors that fund medical bills directly and through credit cards and home equity loans could lose a lot of money. So the Judiciary Sub-Committee hearings on medical bankruptcies last week must have been a little scary. Representatives from both parties seemed to agree that there was a problem in how America pays for health care and that many good families are suffering. For one of the witnesses, the display of sympathy from both Democrats and Republicans was too much to bear.
Todd Zywicki, the one professor who is called to every hearing to defend the 2005 bankruptcy amendments, fired off an op-ed in today’s Washington Times. He and his coauthor attacked the hearing, calling research by Dr. David Himmelstein, Dr. Deborah Thorne, Dr. Steffie Woolhandler and myself “junk science.” Witness Donna Smith was dismissed as a “single-anecdote photo opportunity.” The logic seems to be that the data don’t matter and the personal stories don’t matter, therefore, we Congress shouldn’t reform either health care or bankruptcy.
Dr. Himmelstein and I presented previously published data on medical bankruptcy in careful detail so that people could draw their own conclusions about the exact magnitude of the study. We also were candid about the limitations of the data and the ways in which they may overstate — or understate — the precise magnitude of the problem. Zywicki cherry picks the numbers to score debating points about the connection between bankruptcy and medical problems, ignoring every number that doesn’t suit his purposes. He ignores the other studies we cited showing similar results. He also ignores the data Dr. Mark Rukivina brought forward showing that medical problems are creating serious financial problems for families that haven’t filed for bankruptcy — yet. Zywicki even cites a study from the Office of the United States Trustee, claiming that these data show a smaller incidence of medical bankruptcy — while the US Trustee sat next to him in the hearing and conceded that their study could not identify medical bankruptcies in which the family had medical credit card debt, took out a second mortgage to pay medical debts, was dealing with a debt collector over medical debt, had been sued by a medical services provider, or had lost time from work over medical debt. In other words, the only study Zywicki embraces is one that its sponsors say completely undercounts the number of medical bankruptcies.
Zywicki also dismissed another witness, Donna Smith, the woman with ovarian cancer who was bankrupted by the American medical system. Zywicki concedes that she testified forthrightly,” but he warns that Congress should not be influenced by her testimony because she offered nothing more than “a single-anecdote photo opportunity.”
Read Mrs. Smith’s powerful testimony. She told what it was like to have health insurance and still be crushed by medical bills. She explained how she put off medical visits because her husband was seriously ill. She told about how, when they finally had nothing, a hospital agreed to write off the copay after her husband’s surgery, but told her that if he wanted to come back for follow up treatments, that she would have to show up with cash in hand. She told how her husband was fired while he was in the hospital because he couldn’t do his job. She explained to the Judiciary Committee that she sold nearly everything they had to try to pay their bills. She went back to work six days after abdominal surgery because she needed the paycheck. She explained about the humiliation of filing for bankruptcy and how hard it was to get a job later on. In short, she told about how the American health care system tore apart her life and how bankruptcy was her last hope to try to put a few of the pieces back together.
Donna Smith was the most eloquent witness I have ever seen. She told her story straight from the heart. The members of Congress in that room listened — at least for a while. And the credit industry’s biggest defender says that she should be dismissed out of hand because she added nothing more than a photo-op. That’s just plain ugly.
Professor Zywicki firmly rejects personal testimony when he doesn’t like the story. He attacks serious academic studies as “junk science” when he doesn’t like the data. He inflates the findings of studies he likes beyond the bounds of the studies’ own sponsors. Throughout this exercise, he offers no work of his own: no data, no studies, no stories — nothing but the firm conclusion that he is right.
