Almost every person on earth is one step away from a medical emergency. Unless you are billionaire like Bill Gates, chances are that an unplanned medical disaster is enough to put you in the poor house. In 2009 alone, 1.5 million Americans declared bankruptcy, and a study shows that 60 percent of these filers were trying to cover an unexpected medical expense. According to CNN Health, bankruptcies because of medical bills have increased by nearly 50 percent in the last six years. Back in 2001, 46 percent of all bankruptcies were due to a medical issue. Now, 62 percent of the bankruptcies owe money to a medical facility or a bank because of paying for medical bills on credit.

Demographics show that most of the men and women who file for bankruptcy aren’t poor, but are rather middle class Americans who just need the money because they failed to save for it in the past. The American Journal of Medicine writes that filers are often well-educated homeowners. They say that private insurance offers very little protection against a medical bankruptcy. If an illness costs enough, insurance coverage won’t be enough to help a family evade racking up massive medical debt. Often hospital fees and doctor’s bills are astronomical, and a lot of money needs to come out of pocket in order to cover the costs.

Steffie Woolhandler of the Harvard Medical School says that medical bankruptcy can happen to the best of us. This Harvard professor was one of the contributors to a survey study that interviewed 2,314 people that filed for bankruptcy in 2007. More than 1,000 of the interviewees said that they had medical bills to pay, or mortgaged their home in order to afford hospital expenses. People with over $5,000 in medical costs were more prone to file for bankruptcy, because they were both racking up debt and losing income at the same time. One of the reasons that medical emergencies are so dangerous is because they are accompanied by lost wages. In most cases, the person who is affected by the illness can no longer attend work. That means that has the amount of earnings in the family decreases, the cost of care increases.

On an average, medically bankrupt families spend about $17,943 in out-of-pocket costs. People who had insurance at some point but lost the insurance normally paid about $17,749, and those without any medical insurance normally had to pay about $26,971 out of pocket. Three-quarters of all of the people who file medical bankruptcies do have insurance, but the coverage is not enough to protect them. In order to avoid medical bankruptcy, you should start saving for a medical disaster that could occur in the future, Even if you are healthy, you should take advantage of this opportunity to save.

You may end up in a car accident, or be diagnosed with cancer in the future. The same could happen to a member of your family. While these possibilities may be morbid to dwell on, it’s essential that you be prepared for the worst. Hopefully, you will never need to tap into this reserved account. Yet when a disaster occurs, you want to make sure that you can handle it, rather than add to your tragedy because you are not financially prepped.

Your medical savings account will help to cover the gaps in your insurance. These are normally things like co-payments and deductibles. Also, some procedures may not be covered, even though they are necessary. People who have private insurance should also save because you never know when your illness will apprehend your chance to work. If this happens, then you can end up without any insurance at all. If you need to eliminate creditors then a medical bankruptcy may be your best bet. Talk to a bankruptcy attorney in your area today to get more information about how to relieve your medical debts.