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The thing to take from it is not that the figure the linked study arrives at is "right", but that the cited 2/3 figure is seriously flawed to the point that it shouldn't be cited.

As it is, the 2/3 statistic is mainly used to score political points and indeed one of the authors of the original study that came up with the 60% number is Elizabeth Warren. Now, you could say she participated in her capacity as an academic, but I personally have a hard time believing she would have put her name on the paper if it had found, say, 4% of bankruptcies came from medical debt.



Why not? 4% is also awful. As a politician you'd probably say "One in every 25" rather than 4% if you wanted to emphasise that it's unacceptable.


Yeah I mean you can certainly have the opinion that any amount of medical bankruptcies greater than 0 is unacceptable, but that has nothing to do with my original point that the 2/3 number should not be cited in discussions about bankruptcy.




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