Himmelstein went on to unpack for the fact checker that, even if you were to adopt a more limited measure of bankruptcies that were “very much” linked to medical debt, the number of people going broke is still north of 500,000 a year, because a single bankruptcy typically affects multiple people in a family unit. “When we asked Himmelstein whether Sanders was quoting his study accurately,” the fact checker reports, “he said yes.” David Himmelstein, a professor of public health in the CUNY system and a lecturer at Harvard Medical School. The checker did an admirable thing and reached out to the author of the study, Dr. The journal itself said this was “equivalent to about 530,000 medical bankruptcies annually.”Īt first glance, it appears Bernie understated the problem by rounding down. Sanders’s team told the Post that the Vermont Senator was relying on an estimate published in a medical journal that found that 66.5% of bankruptcy filers cited either medical bills or missed work due to illness as a reason they went broke. So what’s the matter with the statistic? As it turns out: Nothing much at all. To have earned Three Pinocchios, we must assume Bernie’s claim is a real doozy, one wooden puppet short of a “whopper” per the Post. ” (An aside: What is it with the multiple Pinocchios? The Pinocchio didn’t self propagate when he lied - his nose grew.) The Post piece gives the Sanders “Three Pinocchios” for the claim on medical debt, which is the paper’s shorthand for “ mostly false. How True Is 'Respect'? Fact-Checking the Aretha Franklin Biopic But, as the Post ’s recent check of Sanders’ medical bankruptcy stat underscores, the paper’s pursuit of facts can at times go off the rails. The Washington Post has a political fact checking department, and the aim is admirable - to hold candidates accountable and call them out when they’re playing fast-and-loose with the truth. How barbaric is a system that says, “I’m going to destroy your family’s finances because you had cancer”? They didn’t go to Las Vegas and blow their money at a casino.
THE PEOPLE VS MUHAMMAD FACT CHECK TV
“500,000 people go bankrupt every year because they cannot pay their outrageous medical bills,” he said on TV recently, repeating the same point on Twitter:ĥ00,000 Americans will go bankrupt this year from medical bills.
Sanders, who is more fond of statistics than stories, drives home the point with a big number. This is a fact that Bernie Sanders highlights on the stump in support of his Medicare for All proposal.
THE PEOPLE VS MUHAMMAD FACT CHECK DRIVER
Medical debt is a major driver of personal bankruptcy.