rfk, james baldwin and our unfinished conversation about race in america. microsoft president brad smith with the future computed. artificial intelligence and its role in society.friday 8:00 p.m., adam bello talks about publishing authors from both the political right and left. watch book tv this week in prime time on c-span.org c-span2. >> next, look at rising bankruptcy rates among seniors. new study showed the rate has tripled since 1991 for people 65 years and older. as changes have been made to social security, pension programs and medical cost increase. this is from washington journal. >> take a look this chart on your screen. the rate of people 65 and older filing for bankruptcy is three times what it was in 1991.

according to a new study by the consumer bankruptcy project. here to talk about it with us is joining us from illinois, robert lawless who is the university of illinois behavior and loss social science codirector. let's first "what is this consumer bankruptcy project? what is your goal and why are you looking at this? >> it's a long-running research collaboration. it's now run by myself, professor katie at university of idaho and - -. we have a long-running research study. we survey people who file bankruptcy. we collect their court records and financial information. it gives us great insight on the bankruptcy system, whose filing bankruptcy which is also an insight as to what's

happening in the american households. >> the question is why? why are we seeing this trend? >> i think there's lots of reasons. i should say the data in our paper, we can document the trends happened. we ask people why they filed bankruptcy. people over the age of 65 will tell us they have a lot of medical debt. we know a lot of bankruptcy filers have that. we also see income decline which is not surprising. that's pretty characteristic of anyone who files bankruptcy. one thing that stands out with the over 65 population is about one third say the reason they filed is they tried to help out a family member or close friend financially. and that's a fairly big number. one third. that's different than what we see in the under 65 population for bankruptcy filers.

then think about how our paper fits into broader trends and other research about what's been called a retirement crisis. i think our paper fits into the broader research about shifting of risk. people bear more health risks. this more out-of-pocket costs. i think what we are seeing, the roots of our paper being set on before people get to retirement age. then they arrived there and they are a financial problem away from the bankruptcy court. >> we want to hear viewers stories about this. 65 and older - - if you are between the ages of 35 and 64, your line is - -. both under 35 years old. professor lawless taking your questions and comments on

bankruptcy and this rising bankruptcy among older americans. according to a new york times story about your study, about three and five said unmanageable medical expenses played a role. how much of older people's income is going toward medical expenses? >> i think that's hard to say. it varies a lot of course from individual to individual. what we see in the bankruptcy court for the filings is not just income but a lot of credit card debt and what we know from other studies. a lot of that debt is due to medical. there's a lot of hidden medical expenses in people's credit card bills. >> also, two thirds cited a drop in income as well. >> right. yes, again, that something you would see across the board for bankruptcy filers. the figures for the over 65 for

dropped income are similar to other filers. that gets back to the point about the financial frailty. the roots of this are some long before people get to bankruptcy court.they're doing fine but it's one financial disaster away from a bankruptcy filing. and then decline in income the site for many is that financial disaster that pushes them into a filing. >> professor, does this rising trend among older people track with people living longer? is this a natural outcome of people living longer? >> yes and no. the yes is certainly a small part of what we're seeing is due to that but the trend is so large that it can't be explained just by the agent of the american population. the increase, i looked at this

the other day. the increase in people over the age of 65 of the time period of the study is, i forget the exact number. 15-16 percent. were talking about a 20 half fold increase from 1991 until today. >> on the medical expenses, these older people, don't they rely on medicare to pay them? >> yes. medicare to the extent it covers your expenses.but of course medicare doesn't cover everything. medicare also doesn't prevent you from the ãi should rephrase.medicare doesn't help you if you're still working and are not able to work because of your medical problems. they don't provide lost income. when we ask people about their medical problems, we asked two separate questions. what about your medical debts andwhat about loss and lost

income due to medical problems. >> we are asking our reviewers to call and let us know what you think of all this and also figure 6 to 5 and older, we want to hear your story. ray is in clinton, pennsylvania. 65 and older. you are first. good morning. >> i think, we've heard this story before but i used to work at - - and a friend of mine i asked him one morning at 6:00 in the morning starting hour shift. he was 91 years old. and he was, i asked him why he was there for 24 hours a week. he said if i don't work, they will take my house. i can't afford this anymore. here's the caviar, this man was a marine. world war ii, second wave,

okinawa. and look at what he wasn't able to afford to let alone healthcare.he can't afford taxes on his house. these - - it was because of the school tax, he couldn't afford it. this is what's going on. it's not only charging - - again, this affordable care act let's get this straight.if you couldn't afford the premiums, the government is going to subsidize you. who's subsidizing you? the taxpayers . it's not affordable if you have to be subsidized. >> professor lawless, take what he said about unions and healthcare. how does that fit into what you looked at when you look at the data? >> again, we have a fair number of people in the study. first, one of the things i should say is none of these

studies happen unless it's for people returning these surveys. for that, we are appreciative of the people in our study. i think what the caller is illustrating is there's lots of reasons people get into financial distress. you are citing the two thirds figure of the medical leading to the bankruptcy. that means one third aren't deciding that. the stories are varied and diverse and lots of different reasons people are having financial problems. >> david, georgia. good morning to you, david. >> is that mean me? great. i filed bankruptcy a few years back. like he said, medical. i worked for banks and we were responsible.but what happened with me was that i had the - -

and it totally ravaged my body. just for me apart. it has and it still tearing my body up. i'm pretty much out of the loop right now. >> professor lawless, what did you hear about medical costs? is it primarily prescription drugs. is it a procedure? what can be the tipping point for folks filing bankruptcy due to medical expenses? >> yeah, i wish our data made that distinction that you just asked. what sort of, was it the prescription drugs or a medical procedure. and unfortunately, i can't give you the answer to that from our study. a large number as we cited the two thirds figure, hadmedical problems . the story the caller told is a

classic story in the bankruptcy courts. people arriving with medical debt. they may be able to pay it off but they can't work. that double whammy drives them into bankruptcy court. the reasons people and up in financial distress are complex. there's usually more than one reason somebody is there. and i thought the callers story was a classic story of a bankruptcy filing. >> how long, in this study, were seniors typically in that are struggling financially before they sought bankruptcy? >> that's a great question. another thing we've seen in a different paper of hours that viewers can find online. is that people are waiting longer to file bankruptcy. now, about, more than 50

percent weight more than two years before they file bankruptcy. they struggle financially for more than two years and that figure has been on the rise. it's a question the consumer bankruptcy project has been asking for a while. the seniors are just like all other filers, they report the same sort of attempts to stay out of bankruptcy court. attempts to cope with their financial distress. the median, over half, the way i should say is more than half of the people are waiting more than two years to file bankruptcy. they say they seriously struggle financially for more than two years before the filing. >> what's it like when you file bankruptcy? what is the process, what do you have to do? >> the first thing most people need to do is to find a lawyer. bankruptcy is very complex law.

what is the best legal solutio , depends a lot on the individual circumstances. so i generally tell people, if you're thinking about filing bankruptcy, you should consult with a lawyer. so you sit down with a lawyer, they will gather all sort of information about your financial circumstances about the debts you on the assets you have. and in consultation with the lawyer, come up with a plan that sometimes might not involve filing bankruptcy but often would. there are two primary types of bankruptcy. chapter 7 which you file bankruptcy and you pay your creditors out of your existing assets. most people have few assets that can be sold and used to pay creditors. there's also a chapter 13 bankruptcy we pay creditors out of your future income. you get to keep your assets, generally speaking in a chapter 13 did which chapter is best, that's the sort of thing expert

legal advice would be really good in sorting through. ... >> it was due to finally falling into obama care. i've been self-employed and still self-employed i'm 67. i'm in texas as you mentioned. we skated by having to get obama care because the state allowed us to have, you know, they put it off in texas. we just got -- they -- just before we were about to have to

go from 650 a month to 2,048 -- [inaudible] -- make that decision. that finally ran out on us a year and half ago. a year and a half ago, nothing was available except for one company, obama care only. we paid $34,500 for premiums with a $12,000 deductible and had 5,000 out of pocket on just regular kind of drug stuff. i mean, i didn't even see a doctor that year. so we were $40,000 for just standard healthcare and insurance. just not to fall into -- you know, we didn't want to -- i've always had insurance and didn't want to get into the preexisting conditions scenario. >> david, why not medicare?

>> caller: well, i just got into medicare. the year we were talking about i wasn't on medicare. even on that you are still paying money. and the rest of the family. i'm self-employed. the self-employed folks, the 16 to 17 self-employed folks if your income was such that you didn't get subsidies, you absolutely got killed by obama care. and most folks just don't realize that. you had mentioned at the beginning you were talking about the cadillac tax, the vast majority of obama care did not go into effect. i was listening to the show yesterday. your host mentioned something about when obama care went into effect, well it never did. the corporations never were forced to make the decision about having to cover their employees or pay in the $3,000 penalty because everybody knew -- 2009 house committee

meeting where they clearly understood that about 110 million people were going to be -- >> david, i don't want to go too far down this road. let me ask you about the year that you didn't see a doctor. did you need to see a doctor that year and you didn't want to have to pay the cost? you're trying to avoid the extra expenses? >> caller: i'm overweight bshg u u -- but i'm the healthiest overweight dude in our area. it's not about healthcare. insurance is so expensive. even if you can afford insurance, there wasn't a doctor we could see in our county. all we were paying for was to not have -- to not end up with a preexisting condition in the case that happened. that was the absolute only reason we were paying what we were paying. >> professor lawless? >> that touches upon what we were discussing earlier, that not all insurance plans are

created equal. what we see in our data are people even with health insurance who have substantial medical debt, and again, you know, a lot of that shows up on a visa card or mastercard because that's what the hospital or doctor will take and that debt becomes unsustainable and one financial problem and you're in bankruptcy court. and the caller was talking about being self-employed, and we also see, again, in other research that viewers can find on the internet, about self-employed persons and bankruptcy. of course self-employed persons will tell you their income is notoriously cyclical. it goes boom and bust. if you have some of these financial problems at a bust time, and you start getting aggressive debt collection, that's when we're seeing people show up in bankruptcy court, and

that's -- you know, was the stories from this caller and the other callers are very consistent with the data, that our respondents also tell us that one of the things that would drive them to bankruptcy court is aggressive debt collection. >> so what -- what laws can be changed to help older americans? >> that's a great question. i've thought about that a lot, and i've gotten asked that question a lot. i don't want to oversell the point that this isn't just a matter of better social security or better medicare because certainly that would help. there's no question that would help. but again, something i said earlier, the roots of the problems that we're seeing are not because somebody's getting to age 65 and the social security payment isn't quite high enough. the problems we're seeing are shown much much earlier and i

think the results of lots of different policy decisions that have been made over the years. you know, the shifting of risk on individuals. that's happened bit by bit is leading to i think the data that we're seeing in our study but also that are being seen in lots of other studies by lots of other people. so i don't think it's a matter of just having one or two laws changed. i think this is a matter of a national conversation about policies and what sort of risk we expect individuals to bear. >> what risks are people taking -- are being forced to bear that they didn't before? >> so i think a great example is the retirement plan; right? the pension plans, the shift from defined benefit plans to defined contribution plans, where you used to have a promise

from your employer that they would pay a certain amount when you're retired. now the employer is more likely to be putting just a certain amount in to an account, and that's great if the stock market is going up. that's great if you are statistically living the life expectancy that that fund is set for, but it's easy to run through that now. it's possible that the market can go down. those are all risks that people are bearing now that they didn't a generation ago. medical again, right, the rise of higher co-pays, the rise of deductibles, that's putting more risk on individuals when they have an illness. even things like the way we finance higher education. you know, again one of the things we see in our data are people saying i'm in bankruptcy because i helped out a family member or a close friend financially, and some of that is educational debt, not for the

person filing bankruptcy, but for someone else. >> thomas, daytona beach, florida. good morning, thomas, you are on the air. >> caller: good morning. you know, this problem is only going to get worse. the problem is going to be i guess exacerbated by, yeah, we're creating jobs right now. these jobs are all part time. they're not benefit -- they have no benefits attached to them, no healthcare benefits. you know, i was watching yesterday, y'all had a guy on that was talking about for an average company, for a company providing healthcare for their employees, it rounds out to about $14,000 a year per employee for healthcare. you know, i blame -- i want to put the blame squarely on the republican party of this country because for the last 25, 30

years, they have -- it's like when obama was trying to get the aca set up. they wanted to have a public option where people that didn't -- could not afford healthcare or could not get healthcare, just like the guy in texas, said he couldn't get it. if he had had the public option, he could have got on medicare, and that would have covered it. you know, i talk to people -- i live here in florida. we have a house across the road from us that rents out to -- it's a vacation rental. and i talk to some people from canada. you know what they say? they say we are the stupidest people on earth for putting up with what we're putting up with with the insurance companies. you know, you were talking about the risk has been put on to -- more on to the patient. yeah, it has, but the other end of that is the profits of the insurance companies are continuing to rise. >> okay. professor lawless, take his point, at the beginning of his

comment there, that this trend will get worse. his prediction, do you agree? >> i would like to think not. i guess i'm a believer in conversations like this. i'm a believer in statistics and information and that that will help change minds, change conversations. i guess i'm also enough of a realist that it worries me, whether we're going to have the political will in this country to have the sort of conversations i think we need to have. and i think what's interesting is the caller's conversations keep going back to larger issues. and i think that's a fair point. as i said, i think our studies, in what we do with the bankruptcy courts, are a window on to what's happening in society more broadly. i think that's -- i've been overwhelmed by the reaction to this study because it was a

study i thought about something that's happening in a corner of the court system, but i think it's really touched a nerve because it speaks to again what's happening in the broader society. what's showing up in the bankruptcy courts is a window into what's happening in a lot of american households. >> we will go to de soto, kansas, diane. hi, diane. >> caller: good morning. i want to explain something from a little different perspective. i'm retired. i did everything right. okay? i went into requirement debt free. i own my house, my car, no credit card bills, nothing. i had a good job. i had not only social security, based on a pretty good income. i also had a pension plan, defined benefit plan and a 401(k). sounds great; right? everything's right, but here's what's happening.

i've got some real numbers for you. people don't understand medicare, number one. it is complicated. they don't understand that you just can't -- you have to have a supplement policy. my part a-b which is i buy the best medicare supplement i can get called plan f and plan d. it costs me a total of $2,752 a year. i also had extra drug expenses because the part d doesn't pay very well. that was $2,000 a year. in other words, my medicare and my outpatient drug costs, which these are kind of regular drugs, costs me $4,752 a year. okay? but my -- i've had quite a few tests done this year and seen about six different doctors, had

an mri, etc. my out of pocket was zero. everything was covered. people have to know that you have to have all three parts of medicare and get good supplemental insurance. number two, what's killing me, and what i'm worried about in the future, are property taxes, like another gentleman mentioned earlier. my property taxes on my paid for home are $5,000 a year. and i'm a single person. and they're going up constantly, every year, which means just my property taxes and my medical expenses are $9,752 a year. now, i have a pension, and i have a 401(k), and i have social security.

without getting into my 401(k), i get about $52,000 a year. that's good; right? but that's before taxes, before income taxes, before any local taxes, which we have those here, and so what i'm saying is i think i set myself up about as well as a person can be set up, but i'm starting to look ahead that things could get unmanageable, and i cannot imagine people retiring with debt, with house payments and thinking they can make it. i think it is definitely going to get worse, especially because people don't have defined pension benefit plans anymore. >> diane, can i ask you, after you pay your bills at the end of the month, how much spending money do you have? >> caller: oh, gosh.

that kind of varies because i had to redo my deck this year, you know, things like that. i guess -- i honestly can't tell you by the month. i can give you what i paid out on those fixed expenses. >> right. >> caller: i'm not in poverty. okay? i'm doing fine. i'm a single woman. >> but you're worried, diane, about the future. how old are you, if you don't mind me asking? >> i'm 71. >> caller: 71. professor lawless, your response? >> i was thinking that your callers are doing a great job of telling the story that's in the paper. the idea that somebody at 71 who has done everything right should have anxiety about their financial future and the description of the caller's situation. she's absolutely right. she shouldn't have anxiety. she shouldn't be worried about

her financial situation. but, you know, she obviously has some worries. and it's completely understandable why that would be. again, you know, i think that story is the story of the paper, and when we started, you asked why we do this, and again, it tells us something about the bankruptcy system. but again it tells us something about what's happening in american households. >> dan, jackson heights new york. hi, dan. >> caller: hi, as a physician, let me put it this way, i think the problem really is -- [inaudible]. in a sense, that someone starts a business, expecting to make profits, and he would keep going as long as he was making profits, the sale of whatever he's doing. now everything is at a corporate level, and depending on

entrepreneurs, and these people ask an accelerated profit rather than the regular profit, and the end result is there's so many people taking an income from every system that a person uses that someone on fixed income cannot keep up with the acceleration in expenses. we really have to decide at which point do we consider a fee for service and at which point do we consider a -- for entrepreneurial investment. only 1% of the physicians have their own practice. the rest of them are working for a corporation, a corporation that depends on entrepreneurs and depends on the profit that they make. >> dan, understand the point. professor lawless?

>> yeah, you know, at some point i think we have to decide if people -- if we're going to have people on fixed income, we need to have fixed expenses. i understand the caller's point. we don't have fixed expenses. there are fixed incomes, but the expenses keep going up. i think again that ties in really well with the theme of the paper is that people are ariving at retirement age usually on a fixed income, at least without the flexibility of an income that you might have at a younger age. and expenses rise or i think what we see mainly in our paper is expenses don't just rise, but they spike; right? there's a big expense, a big medical debt, some sort of big financial crisis, and they end up in bankruptcy court. so again, i think your caller -- what your callers are saying is exactly -- fits very well with what the paper's findings are. >> mary is in pennsylvania.

good morning to you. >> caller: good morning. i want to reiterate what diane said. you know, we planned well. we down sized. we did everything so that we could end up being with our fixed income comfortable. you know, not extravagant, but comfortable. he died. i lost $10,000 in income. and i think a lot of widows do not understand that when your husband dies, you're going to lose your social security, but you're also going to lose a good portion of his pension, which, you know, let's face it, men get more of a pension than women do. and so you end up behind the eight ball because you're losing all that income, and then you discover that everybody else wants more money, especially school taxes. my school taxes are the same as diane's on a house that's worth

about $170,000 a year. so i'm paying $5,000 a year in taxes. now, we planned. but i know a lot of women because of the area that i'm in, which is a low income area, they're spending almost half of their social security just to keep in their houses. just to keep the roof over their heads because the school taxes are becoming astronomical. >> mary, when you say school taxes, you are talking about property taxes in >> caller: yes. but you know, your taxes are divided into two parts. one is municipal, which goes to the municipal government, which i'm thankful for. they understand that we're living in a poor area. let's keep the taxes down. and then the school taxes. because of the underfunding of

the pension plans in pennsylvania, they're just rising astronomically. and it's going to get worse because we are really behind in making sure that the pension plans are paid for. and i don't know what's going to happen to a lot of these elderly women that, you know, they're trying to just keep the roof over their heads. i look at the future, and i sit there and wonder if i can afford my little $170,000 home some day because of the taxes. >> okay. >> caller: but remember, i did well. i planned for having, you know, a good part b and part d so that i wouldn't have a lot of healthcare issues, in the future. i'm paying more than i have to right now. >> mary in pennsylvania.

we will go to jim in erie, pennsylvania. jim, go ahead. >> caller: i wanted to ask the professor a couple questions. i will tell you here in erie, pennsylvania, the lady from kansas was speaking a little bit ago about property taxes. my wife and i are thinking about selling our house because property taxes here in pennsylvania just i mean everywhere you look, they just go up and up and up. and i was reminded by a neighbor, you know, people that rent, you don't have all these property taxes. so we're thinking about so we don't have to go into bankruptcy, selling the house, a good time to sell a house here in erie, pennsylvania, and then becoming renters. and i just want to let that out there. but i wanted to ask the professor, what's the correlation between like here in pennsylvania, we get -- well in erie, pennsylvania, there's a lot of city debt and i know nationally what we're up to

about 20, 21 trillion dollars in debt. i mean, when you look at that big debt hanging over all americans, how does that -- how does that filter down? and how does that impact individual bankruptcies, and do i need a lawyer to declare bankruptcy, or can i do it on this -- there's a zoom -- legal zoom or whatever it is that my daughter keeps saying, dad, you can do anything on there these days. save yourself some bucks and don't go pay a lawyer. but can we do a bankruptcy on that legal zoom outfit? >> okay, jim, we will get some answers. >> yeah, let me take those questions in order. so national debt and how it filters down into consumer bankruptcies, i don't think it does at all, to be honest. i've studied bankruptcy filing trends, and what really drives bankruptcy filing trends, you know, as i like to say, you need a fancy computer and a lot of statistics to conclude that people who file bankruptcy have

debt. so what drives bankruptcy filing trends are -- is consumer debt. so if consumer debt goes up and down, bankruptcy filings go up and down. and consumer debt is going up. so i think in the near future, bankruptcy filings are going to start going back up as well. in terms of whether you need a lawyer to file bankruptcy, so the technical answer is you don't. you can file bankruptcy. you have a legal right to file bankruptcy without a lawyer if you would like to do so. i think that's probably not a great idea. bankruptcy is not kind of cookie cutter legal proceedings. what is best for you in a bankruptcy proceeding depends a little bit on your goals and your financial situation and what assets you have and what state you are in and all sorts of things, and i really would suggest to people that they use an attorney if they're thinking about filing bankruptcy. if you can't afford an attorney,

a lot of local jurisdictions have pro bono services that might be able to provide an attorney. some places have what are sometimes called low bono services where you pay maybe a reduced fee if you can show financial need. but i really strongly urge people to try to use a lawyer if you're going to file bankruptcy. you're going to get the best outcome. bankruptcy is also not just something you can just try and try. you get basically one shot at it. and if it doesn't go well, you've used up your one shot at a fresh start. so if you're thinking about filing bankruptcy, probably best to try to use a lawyer. >> we will go to charles next in new jersey. >> caller: hi. how are you doing? hello? >> yes, charles, you are on the air. >> caller: oh, okay. yeah. i got caught up in a situation that hasn't been mentioned yet. i had a pretty well-paying job,

and, you know, and i just had started 401(k)'s because where i worked at they didn't have them in the original time when it started. started to get a little bit of money in my 401(k) and started getting for some pretty decent wages. so i decided i'm going to put an addition on my house. so i put an addition on my house, and they valued my property at about 165, 170,000 dollars with the addition in there. and then the bottom fell out. and i lost my job that i thought i was secure in. and the value of my house came down. and that's the reason why i'm -- i had to use my credit cards to keep what i had, i had to cash in the 401(k), the little bit i had in it, but the penalties were really bad.

i couldn't find employment. i looked. you know, that's how i got -- that's how i got tied up in debt. >> professor lawless? >> so you asked about people earlier about people struggling before bankruptcy, and that story, not suggesting the caller is going to file bankruptcy, but the story is what we see in the data. people go to great lengths to try to avoid filing bankruptcy, and the caller's story about the job loss, the income interruption, the financial disaster that starts causing the financial distress, and then the steps that the caller was trying to take to try to dig out of that. that's very common. we see that a lot. one thing we haven't talked about in our data is what people tell us they go without. you know, a majority of people will say that they skip doctor appointmen appointments, skipped other medical care to try to cope with

financial distress. we have people reporting they went without food or just auto repairs, all sorts of just basic things that a lot of people take for granted. sometimes there's this idea that people filing bankruptcy are irresponsible. you know, i'm not going to suggest that there's not ever in a large country like ours, that there's not ever the one or two cases that are abusive. but the vast vast majority of people who end up in bankruptcy court have gone through lots of struggled a lot and tried to do a lot of things to try to cope with their financial distress, and the caller's story i think fits very well with that. >> if our viewers want to learn more, you can go to credit slips.org. professor robert lawless, thank you for the conversation this morning. >> thank you for having me on your show. >> c-span's washington journal live every day with news and policy issues that impact you.

coming up tuesday morning, bloomberg news campaign finance reporter bill allison on rules for members of congress on stock holding and trading. then as part of our campaign 2018 coverage, reporters talk about primaries in four states, including connecticut, minnesota, minnesota public radio political reporter, and wisconsin with "milwaukee journal sentinel" washington bureau chief. be sure to watch c-span's "washington journal" live at 7:00 a.m. eastern tuesday morning. join the discussion. >> here on c-span 2 tonight, the communicators is next, with a look at 5 g and the next generation of wireless technology. then book tv is in prime-time with local authors from our c-span cities tour, starting with: