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Bankruptcies in northern West Virginia have spiked 44%.
January 1 to July 31, bankruptcies increased from 1,052 cases last year to 1,511 this year.
About 60 percent of people who go bankrupt are actually capsized by medical bills.
Bankruptcies due to medical bills increased by nearly 50 percent in a six-year period, from 46 percent in 2001 to 62 percent in 2007.
Most of those who filed for bankruptcy were middle-class, well-educated homeowners, according to a report published in The American Journal of Medicine.
"Unless you're a Warren Buffett or Bill Gates, you're one illness away from financial ruin in this country," says lead author Steffie Woolhandler, M.D., of the Harvard Medical School, in Cambridge, Massachusetts
"If an illness is long enough and expensive enough, private insurance offers very little protection against medical bankruptcy, and that's the major finding in the study."
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