Is our health insurance nothing but “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing”? I can’t help but wonder, since 75% of the people who are forced into personal bankruptcy due to medical problems had insurance when they became ill or were hurt, as Reed Abelson pointed out in his New York Times article on Wednesday.

As we all know, President Obama and our legislators are attempting to rectify the health care crisis by standardizing minimum insurance coverage and by setting a ceiling on out-of-pocket expenses. But will that be good enough? I have to doubt it after reading about Lawrence Yurdin in Reed Abelson’s article. Yurdin is a computer security specialist who was insured by Aetna. His policy was supposed to cover up to $150,000 in hospital care per year. What he didn’t know was that it was primarily for room and board; any other hospital services were limited to $10,000. Mr. Yurdin’s unpaid medical bills amounted to almost $200,000. Despite having paid for what he thought would be sufficient hospital coverage, Mr. Yurdin and his wife must file for bankruptcy.

According to a national study done by the American Journal of Medicine, 62.1% of all bankruptcies in 2007 were medically related. In case you think that this statistic is a result of the uninsured unemployed masses, think again. The American Journal of Medicine’s research found “Most medical debtors were well educated, owned homes, and had middle-class occupations. Three quarters had health insurance.”

In response to this surge in bankruptcy claims, Congress passed, and President Bush signed, the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act in 2005. This Act (sometimes referred to as the “New Bankruptcy Law”) is intended to, among other things, increase the difficulty for certain consumers to file bankruptcy under Chapter 7; some may file under Chapter 13 instead.

Hopefully, what the present Congress accomplishes will signify something.