Pros y Contras de la Bancarrota

Bancarrota: ¿Alivio o Error?
Las Reglas para Declararse en Quiebra
Julia Suarez, Univision Online

Cada año más de un millón de estadounidenses se declara en bancarrota. Sin embargo, la legislación que entró en vigor en 2005 cambió las cosas: acogerse a este recurso para acabar con las deudas ya no es tan fácil.

¿Qué es la bancarrota?

Son millones los estadounidenses que se sienten cada año ahogados por las deudas, para ellos declararse en bancarrota es la única salida de una situación insostenible y sin escapatoria.

Aunque esta opción mancha el historial de crédito, para muchos es la única solución.

Existe un porcentaje elevado de personas que optan por este recurso llevados por publicidad engañosa que no explica claramente qué involucra un proceso de bancarrota.

En muchos casos no se han explorado todas las posibilidades de refinanciar la deuda. La Asociación Americana de Servicios Financieros (American Financial Services Association) recomienda consultar con expertos antes de tomar una decisión.

Sin embargo, en situaciones de desempleo o de una deuda que excede la capacidad de pago lo más probable es que se vea obligado a recurrir a la quiebra.

Este engorroso proceso legal puede afectar el crédito durante varios años, pero también significa un punto final al angustiante peso de una deuda impagable.

Are Half of All Bankruptcies Medical?

Is it really true that half of all consumer bankruptcies result from catastrophic medical expenses? Not according to Linda Gorman, who posted on the subject on John Goodman's Health Policy Blog in 2008. Gorman traces the idea back to a 2005 Health Affairs article based on questionable methodology.

Medical Bankruptcy Myths
by Linda Gorman

The idea that half of all bankruptcies are caused by medical debt has become part of the common folklore. But where did the idea come from? What is the evidence for it? The claim, first made in a 2005 Health Affairs article, is at variance with four decades of economic research, including a finding that even large medical bills have no impact on family living standards.

The paper by David Himmelstein, Elizabeth Warren, Deborah Thorne, and Steffie Woolhandler was published as a Health Affairs web exclusive on February 5, 2005. The authors are strong proponents of government run health care.

The data comes from 1,250 personal bankruptcy cases, assumed to be representative of the almost 1.5 million households that filed for bankruptcy in 2001. The data on each bankruptcy were abstracted from court records and supplemented with 931 telephone interviews. The paper's conclusions about illnesses in households were based on medical interviews conducted with 391 people. The paper does not specify how those people were selected. It does say that Himmelstein and Woolhandler (H & W), both MDs, coded the diagnoses given by debtors into the categories used for the analysis.

The classifications used to determine a medical bankruptcy were odd. Only 28.3 percent of the sample cited self-reported illness or injury as a cause of bankruptcy. However, H & W managed to almost double that figure (to 54.5 percent) by counting the following as "illnesses":

•1. A birth or addition of a new family member
•2. A death in a family
•3. A drug or alcohol addiction
•4. Uncontrolled gambling
•5. Loss of at least 2 weeks of work-related income due to illness or injury by anyone in the household
•6. Out-of-pocket medical bills of $1,000 in the two years before filing by anyone in the household
•7. Mortgaging a home to pay medical bills.
In a 2005 article in the Northwestern University Law Review, Prof. Todd J. Zywicki called the $1,000 threshold for contributing medical debt "indefensible." That's an understatement. By H & W criteria, a bankruptcy with $50,000 in student loans and $1,001 in unpaid medical bills would be classified as a "medical bankruptcy." Moreover, the average U.S. household had out-of-pocket expenses of $2,182 in 2001!

In a 2006 review (gated) of the H & W study results in Health Affairs, David Dranove and Michael L. Millenson:

•Recalculate the medical bankruptcy rate using the data given in the H & W paper. They conclude that just 17 percent of the H & W sample "had medical expenditure bankruptcies," although it cannot be stated "with any degree of certainty whether medical spending was the most important cause of bankruptcy."
•Explain that "four decades of studies have addressed the bankruptcy-medical spending connection" and that the results from those studies are much closer to their 17 percent estimate than to the 54.5 percent estimates of H & W.
•Cite a 2002 Fay, Hurst, and White American Economic Review study, which found no statistical link between bankruptcies and health problems.
•Cite a 1999 Domowitz and Sartain Journal of Finance study, which found that high medical debt raised the probability of bankruptcy for the tiny proportion of the population that had high medical debt, but that at the margin, credit cards were the largest single contribution to bankruptcy.

Moreover, Helen Levy in an Economic Research Initiative on the Uninsured working paper estimated the effect of being diagnosed with a serious new health condition, (cancer, diabetes, heart attack, chronic lung disease, or stroke) and found that household consumption "remains smooth" in the face of serious health shocks for both insured and uninsured households.

Should You File for Bankruptcy?

The American Bankruptcy Institute's Consumer Bankruptcy Center has posted this very basic article on how to decide whether you should file for bankruptcy. We will post more detailed articles in the future, but the checklist below is a starting point.

Should I file for bankruptcy?
Whether to file for bankruptcy is a very personal decision. Some people do not have any assets over and above what the law allows them to keep, even if they do not pay their creditors. If this is true of you, then you may not need a bankruptcy in order to protect your assets.

Some people find it helpful to file a bankruptcy case anyway because their financial situation is causing them emotional distress or depression, or because they would like to free themselves of debt now, if legally allowed, and have their income and assets to themselves in the future. Also, some people may find that a bankruptcy is worth filing even if they do lose some of their assets.

Throughout this section of the Consumer Bankruptcy Center, we try to help you decide if bankruptcy is for you.

Considering Bankruptcy Checklist

If several of the following apply in your situation, you might consider bankruptcy:

• Your wages have been garnished or your bank account has been attached
• Most of your debts are unsecured debts like credit card bills, hospital or doctors bills, etc.
• Your total debt, not including your car or house loan, is more than you could pay, even over five or more years
• Collection agencies are calling you at home and/or at work
• Your payments are more than 30 days behind on more than one bill
• There are lawsuits pending against you
• You have high medical bills not covered by insurance
• You owe income taxes that you are currently unable to pay
• You have few assets
• You have little or no savings
• You have had property repossessed (such as a vehicle)

People who have had their wages garnished can especially benefit from a bankruptcy because the bankruptcy will stop the garnishment and could potentially help you get some of the garnished money back.

A law passed in 2005 makes it more complicated to file for bankruptcy and to be freed of past debts.

You should seek advice of competent bankruptcy counsel before deciding whether to file for bankruptcy. You may search for a certified consumer bankruptcy attorney at www.abcworld.org.

American Bankruptcy Institute podcasts interview of consumer debt scholar

American Bankruptcy Institute Executive Director Samuel J. Gerdano interviewed the director of the Center for Consumer Financial Services at Rochester Institute of Technology, Robert Manning, recently about the Credit Card Act signed into law by President Obama in May. Manning, author of Credit Card Nation and founder of the Responsible Debt Relief Institute, is considered one of the leading experts on household debt, spending and the consumer lending industry.

The ABI has posted a podcast of the interview at its http://podcast.abiworld.org/ website.