was it half of all US personal bankruptcies that were due to a medical emergency?  I forget the figure...

oh yeah there it is ... what would I do without google...

and many of these are middle class people with (alleged) health insurance.

my biggest fears as a US worker are serious illness, or being laid off before the earliest retirement (pension available) age... either one could mean having to sell my home...  I do have HMO health insurance through the employer but it has deductibles and gotchas and is sometimes slow to reimburse etc.  only pays half of dental fees, blah blah.

and I always keep 6 months to a year of survival money in the bank, and seldom carry credit card debt over a month boundary.  even those who try to live w/in their means and avoid debt can be afraid of suddenly losing most or all of their prosperity through medical expenses or litigation.  it is all very Victorian somehow...

it must always be an unpleasant shock to lose a job or have a sudden medical crisis, no matter where you live... but in the US it brings a  particular dread.  Ehrenreich wrote a book about this fear at the heart of the middle class, Fear of Falling.  I never actually read it but the reviews were fairly good.

The difference between theory and practise in practise ...