I didn’t write this. The Bankruptcy Trustee up in the country, Possum Potterfield, asked me to post it for him, hoping it might help people understand the problems of real people in his district. He says it’s pretty much all true.

To be perfectly honest, I have not seen a lot to smile about on the Bankruptcy front in the past few months. In September, we had 6 full days of 341 meetings at the Agricultural Center. I actually thought seriously about putting an ad in the Dispatch asking folks to bring a covered dish and their fiddles, banjos and guitars so we could have a hymn singing and dinner on the grounds.

Then I saw an article in the state paper telling me the experts are at it again trying to figure out what causes bankruptcy. A big grin came across my face. The more I read the happier I got, until I broke out into a belly laugh and hollered for Miss Constance to come in my office and listen to the nonsense I was reading.

A couple of years ago, some Harvard hotshots spent a million or so dollars doing a study that would tell us officially something we already knew. About 50% of all consumer bankruptcies are filed because of medical debt. This startling revelation was mentioned from the podium at every bankruptcy program I attended around the state and everyone in the audience would say under his or her breath “I hear that!” This is a southern expression of congratulations on finally recognizing the obvious.

The paper says a couple of guys from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University have been paid another million or so dollars by the health insurance trade group, America’s Health Insurance Plans, to do a reanalysis of the Harvard numbers. They say only 17% of consumer bankruptcies are “medical expenditure bankruptcies.” I assume they mean only 17% of bankruptcies are caused by medical debt, although I’m not certain what their definition of “Medical expenditure bankruptcy” is. I know one thing for certain, I don’t believe their claptrap. These boys are at least a row and a half short of a full bail of cotton.

The United States of America has national medical insurance. It is Chapter 7.

What I don’t understand is why they care? It appears the health insurance lobby is up to no good. Computers that do statistical analysis are wonderful things, but they won’t replace one-on-one conversations with Debtors who are hurting because they are sick or injured, or with debtors hurting in their hearts because their children are sick or injured.

Many have such a good spirit. Will Braintree, our local farrier, came to his meeting of creditors with a list of doctor and hospital bills as long as my arm. I asked him what had happened. He said he was shoeing a horse when it kicked and stuck a nail, that was through in through the hoof, right into his eye. “Mr. Potterfield, I’ve got me a new eye now,” he said, as he slipped the glass eye out of its socket and held it on the end of his finger for Miss Constance and me to admire.

I don’t know what these Kellogg flakes are thinking about. Half the debtors who appear at the Ag-Center have at least one ruptured disc. Crohn’s Disease is not unusual. Heart problems, obesity and sugar diabetes are at epidemic levels. Any complication with the birth of a child that results in a visit to the Children’s Hospital is an automatic trip to bankruptcy. “Adequate” medical insurance is unheard of. Then there are those with cancer and kidney disease who want to wipe the slate clean before they die, hoping they won’t leave their spouse and children with too many bills. Every time Miss Constance and I run a straw poll, just to see what’s happening in the real world, we find four primary causes of consumer bankruptcy: loss of job opportunity (the factory moved to Mexico); the ease with which one can obtain multiple credit cards and accumulate obscene amounts of debt; as we always say melodically in the country D-I-V-O-R-C-E; and with a whopping 40 to 45% of the market, medical debt. Occasionally we find the poor soul sitting before us is suffering from a combination of all four.

There was a day when I could look at a set of schedules a week before the meeting of creditors and predict a debtor would appear at his 341 with a broken arm or recovering from a galloping case of Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, because I knew all the doctors and what they treated. Today no one can tell what disease or injury might have brought a debtor to his financial knees because the doctors take credit cards.

Obviously figuring out the exact causes of bankruptcy is not an exact science. Just before Halloween, we called the case of Percy and Priscilla Percy. Only Priscilla came to the table and raised her hand to be sworn in. “Where is Percy?” I asked.

“He’s home. He can’t come,” Priscilla said very matter-of-factly. “He don’t never leave home.”

“Percy is going to have to come down here and talk to us or he won’t be able to get a discharge,” I tried to explain.

“I don’t think you want him here,” she said. “He’s got the ag-row-phobia. Just walkin’ to the mailbox can make him ill.” Priscilla went on to explain that about seven years ago Percy’s mama died while he was with his buddies at the races in Talladega. When he got home and found out what had happened, he went to the funeral. That was the last time he willingly left their house.

Priscilla said they had to file bankruptcy because they could not pay all their bills from her salary alone. Was their case a “medical expenditure bankruptcy?” I think it was, but Snap, Crackle and Pop from Kellogg would not have a clue unless they heard the following exchange between Priscilla and me:

“Priscilla, what would happen if I got an order of the Bankruptcy Court directing the United States Marshal to go out to your house, put Percy in the car and bring him here?”

“He’d throw up right on this table.”