Immanentize the Eschaton

I didn’t watch President Obama’s speech last night. I rarely watch State of the Union addresses; I prefer to read the transcripts the next day.

So I was reading the transcript in the NY Times and saw this section:

“…we must also address the crushing cost of health care.

This is a cost that now causes a bankruptcy in America every 30 seconds. “

Can that number be accurate? I did a quick calculation: 120 half-minute/hour X 24 hours/day X 365 days/year = 1,051,200 bankruptcies allegedly caused by ” the crushing cost of health care”.

I did a quick Google search to try and find the total number of personal bankruptcies filed last year. The best I could do (so far) is this:

“By the end of the year, the number of personal bankruptcies filed during 2008 could be greater than 1.1 million, the executive director of the American Bankruptcy Institute has told the Los Angeles Times.”

So Obama wants us to believe that roughly 95% of all personal bankruptcies are caused by medical costs? I find that hard to swallow. What else did he stretch in his speech?

UPDATE:  I should ALWAYS check NRO/The Corner first!  Here are the relevant numbers:

“…In 2007, the last year data was available, there were just over 822,000 non-business bankruptcies nationwide. But according to a study by Dr. Ning Zhu at UC-Davis, only 5 percent of them were caused by medical bills. That’s only 41,000 medical bankruptcies…”