Well I think you do see most of the core issues, but I would only add it wasn't courts that have under the new law decided these people can't get a discharge, its congress and potus. My anecdotal experience as to how many bk cases I see are abusive for one reason or another is about 5% and they were subject to the sec. 527 and 727 remedies I described before. The balance of the cases I see arise from the following in descending order: divorce, illness, injury, lay off and entrepreneurial failure. I do not see how punishing these people to get at the 5% of abusers with the new law (when you already had remedies to go after that 5%) accomplishes anything other than reducing the efficiency of the economy.
If my predictions as to harm to the economy bear out, this law will still not be changed. There is no debtors driven underground lobby to propose the change and the MBNA et al lobby will be in place strong as ever, with its bought and paid for dems and reps, to make sure no such proposed change ever occurs.
"....but I would only add it wasn't courts that have under the new law decided these people can't get a discharge, its congress and potus"
There is always judicial discretion, is there not? There is a judgement call - does a case fall within the 20% that should be forced in to Chap 13 (not my statistic, but I can't provide a citation), or does it not? This law hardly ELIMINATES Chap 7, just provides another standard of hardship to get to Chap 7, from my non-legal reading of it's implications.
The basket-cases will still get debts discharged via Chap 7.
It seems like you are assigning a greater impact to the relatively few cases that get tossed to Chap 13 than may be warranted, unless I am missing something.