Part 2: Health care in Utah: Broken by the system

Editor's note: This is the second of a five-part series.

Medicine saved one Utah woman when she developed a kinked colon that required emergency surgery. It saved another when a freak outdoor accident nearly destroyed her face. And it saved a man in his mid-40s dying of cancer.

But when the bills for the care that saved them came due, medicine almost destroyed their lives.

These three are among the hundreds who file for bankruptcy each month in Utah. And though no one tracks precisely how many of those bankruptcies are primarily due to medical bills, some experts put the number at close to 60 percent. Few dispute the contention of noted economics expert and

Harvard law professor Elizabeth Warren that 90 percent of the families who file for bankruptcy have at least one of these three reasons: job loss, medical problems or a family breakup through death or divorce. Half, she says, have two of the three and 20 percent have all three.

In just the first nine months of this year, 10,706 bankruptcies were filed in Utah, including 6,905 Chapter 7, where assets are liquidated to pay debts, and 3,731 under Chapter 13, which allows "debt adjustment" for individuals and families.

The bankruptcy court does not keep statistics on type of debt leading to bankruptcy, but the clerk of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Utah, David Sime, said medical debt is unquestionably a significant contributor. And he notes that it's sometimes hard to quantify because "there's a trend to use credit cards (to pay medical bills). So if someone listed $20,000 in credit card debt, some of that could be medical." That also means that when researchers comb through filings for studies, medical bills may be hidden and a more significant factor than it appears.

Utah attorney Marji Hanson, who specializes in bankruptcy, says it's rare not to have medical creditors as part of a bankruptcy filing. "It happens all the time," she said. "Sometimes there's no other debt. When Congress passed bankruptcy reform in 2005, there was huge delusion (that) people were filing to scam the system. But it really is divorce, loss of a job and illness. And right now it's also mortgages they cannot afford."