A series of papers by long-time single-payer advocates, David Himmelstein and Steffie Woolhandler, claim more than half of personal bankruptcies are due to medical bills (critiqued here) and most recently 62.1 percent (critiqued here).

If nearly two-thirds of bankruptcies in the U.S. are really due to medical bills, then we should expect the rate of personal bankruptcies to be one-third of the US rate in Canada, which has a single-payer system of national health insurance financed by tax dollars. However, the Canadian-based Fraser Institute finds that bankruptcy rates in Canada are very similar – if not slightly higher – than rates found in the United States.