Yeah, that's my point. The medical bills "send them over the edge"--why?
At all levels, shouldn't people be structuring their finances so that can roll with the punches at least a little?
Reminds me of a story that was trumpeted during Katrina. People in a certain neighborhood were going around to the businesses asking for loans in the amount of $30 and $40 so they could gas up their cars and evacuate.
The "problem," according to the story, was that the guvmint checks didn't come in until the end of the month, so the people had no money to buy one tank of gas.
Hello, I don't care if you "make" $250 a month on welfare or whatever. Considering that true emergencies occur very infrequently, even if you put a dollar a month under your mattress, after a while you'd have at least enough to buy some gas to get yourself and your family 50 miles out of town ahead of a killer hurricane.
Same goes for people at other economic levels. The higher the level, the more the need to plan for a rainy day.
I can guarantee that some of the people who file bankruptcy over $12K in medical bills would have thought nothing of going out and incurring at least $12K in consumer credit debt and it not becoming a bankruptcy situation.