Dr. David Himmelstein is an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and a primary care doctor at the Cambridge Hospital in Massachusetts. Dr. Himmelstein is also a founder of Physicians for a National Health Program. In 2005 and 2009, he helped write major studies finding that medical bills were a leading contributor to personal bankruptcies in the United States. He spoke to the freelance writer Anne Underwood. Q. How many medical bankruptcies are there annually in this country? A. The forecast for this year is that there will be 1.4 million to 1.5 million total bankruptcy filings. Our data say 62 percent of those will be medical. That works out to around 900,000 cases, and each one affects about 2.7 people. That makes roughly 2.4 million people who will suffer from new medical bankruptcy filings in 2009 alone. Q. What’s the fallout from declaring medical bankruptcy? A. We know that bankruptcy in general is considered hugely shameful. People who will tell you the intimate details of their sex lives will refuse to tell you about their bankruptcies. It shows up for years on credit reports. It creates problems in obtaining housing and getting jobs. […]