Gail Heriot has uncovered a previous study by some of the authors of the much-criticized study claiming that 50% of bankruptcies are caused by medical problems. Gail observes:
I learned today that this was not the first time lead author David Himmelstein and co-author Steffie Woolhandler, both Harvard University associate clinical professors of medicine, weighed in with an unusual medical perspective on a hotly contested political issue. In 1996, when Massachusetts was considering abolishing rent control, Himmelstein and Woolhandler protested with the argument that (as Woolhandler put it), “If rent control vanishes, dozens will die.” Noting that stress and social isolation can and sometimes do result in heart attack and death, she stated, “One-third of our heart attack patients at Cambridge Hospital live in rent-controlled apartments. By allowing landlords to force them out, the governor and state Legislature are implementing the death penalty–a social policy sure to kill.”
Only heart attacks by rent-subsidized tenants were considered in this curious analysis. One could, of course, spin out similar tales of heart attacks by landlords who are unable to make ends meet because they can’t charge fair market rents or of would-be tenants falling ill when they can’t find an apartment at all, because nobody is willing to build apartments buildings that will only be rent controlled when completed. But evidently the good doctors were not inclined to go that far.
She has some other good reporting from that time.
Comments are closed.