Universal health care might have prevented market crash

[sylvar]

First, consider this:

"Hundreds of thousands of Americans file for personal bankruptcy each year because of medical bills—even though they have health insurance, according to a new [2005] study by Harvard University legal and medical researchers."—Study Ties Bankruptcy to Medical Bills, by Reed Abelson, New York Times

And when so many people are forced into poverty by the absence of universal health care, mortgages fail. And that's a major cause of this financial crisis:

"None of this would have happened if the housing market had not imploded, leaving all these firms with staggering losses from their investments tied to mortgages."—How we got here: It's housing, stupid, by Chris Isidore, CNNMoney.com senior writer

Comments

[tiger-stripes.livejournal.com]

I don't buy it. There are several things causing this, but the first two:
1. Consumer debt (remember when credit cards weren't given to just anyone?)
2. Housing debt

People eating crap and being latent is a good part of what's taxing our health care system, but it wouldn't have prevented the financial crisis.

I agree that health care insurance is created a class system, but it's not what bankrupted the country. It's our current regime.

[h-postmortemus.livejournal.com]

Interesting, but I think that was more of a smokescreen for what was really going on.

[sylvar.livejournal.com]

What was really going on?

[h-postmortemus.livejournal.com]

A giant shell game where borrowers, mortgage brokers, banks and investment companies lied to each other (and themselves). Everyone pretended what they were doing was ethical, safe, and legitimate.

It's a lot like a child's belief in sympathetic magic.