According to research from Sun Life Financial, most workers fear financial ruin more than death. And that fear is well-founded, shows Harvard-led research cited by the company.
The academic study of 2007 data, published in the American Journal of Medicine, found that 62 percent of all bankruptcies were medical. Most medical debtors were well-educated, owned homes, and had middle-class occupations — and worse yet, three-quarters of those who fell into bankruptcy did have health insurance.
It's the atypical catastrophic illness like heart attack, stroke or cancer that is liable to wreak financial havoc. Sun Life looked at its medical claims data and found that the out-of-pocket costs of these and other illnesses averaged $7,575. The average for a stroke approached $18,000.
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