This article is part of Medical Bankruptcy in America, a Patients Rising series examining how medical debt appears in federal bankruptcy filings across the United States. The cases referenced come from publicly filed court records. To protect personal privacy, we focus on the financial details and creditor listings rather than identifying the individuals involved.

Case Snapshot

• Location: Racine, Wisconsin — Wisconsin's 1st Congressional District
• Chapter: 7 (liquidation), joint filing
• Occupation on Schedule I: child care, in a private household
• Total liabilities: $223,779
• Medical debt: $196,098 — 97.1% of all unsecured debt
• Creditors: Froedtert Health — $180,000; Tomah Memorial Hospital — $16,098
• Monthly income: about $1,416
• Monthly expenses: about $1,025
• Monthly margin: about $391

The highest-priced hospital in the state

There is, in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, an academic medical center called Froedtert Hospital. It is the principal teaching hospital of the Medical College of Wisconsin, the only academic medical center in eastern Wisconsin, and the regional referral center for the most complex cases — Level I trauma, transplant, advanced cancer care, complex cardiothoracic surgery.

It is also, by the RAND Corporation's hospital price transparency study, the highest-priced hospital system in Wisconsin, charging private insurers approximately 392 percent of Medicare rates.

In 2024, a married couple in Racine — about thirty miles south of Wauwatosa — filed jointly for Chapter 7.

Schedule I lists the occupation of the first debtor: child care, for a private-household employer.

The household's income was roughly $1,416 a month — about $17,000 a year. Expenses ran about $1,025. The margin was roughly $391.

Total debts: $223,779. Medical debt: $196,098 — 97.1 percent of all unsecured debt.

Two medical creditors on the schedule:

• Froedtert — $180,000
• Tomah Memorial Hospital — $16,098

The math, plainly

The household earns about $17,000 a year.

It owes Froedtert $180,000 — more than ten years of its entire pre-tax income — for care delivered at the highest-priced hospital system in the state.

If every dollar of the household's monthly margin went to the Froedtert balance and nothing else, it would take roughly thirty-eight years to retire it. Adding the Tomah Memorial balance pushes that past forty.

They filed Chapter 7 instead.

Both creditors are 340B hospitals

Froedtert is a registered 340B disproportionate-share hospital at all of its acute-care facilities. Tomah Memorial is a 340B critical-access hospital.

Both, in other words, purchase outpatient drugs at federally discounted prices on the statutory premise that those savings support care for low-income patients.

This household earns about $17,000 a year. By any standard the program itself would recognize — federal poverty guideline, state median, area median income — it is exactly the population 340B describes.

What 340B does not require, at any participating hospital, is that the savings show up as a smaller bill for a patient like this one. The drug-cost savings flow into the hospital's pharmacy budget. The bill to the patient is the hospital's standard rate, adjusted by whatever insurance discount or charity-care policy happens to apply — and nothing in federal law requires the hospital to tell the patient that policy exists.

Why these cases matter

Wisconsin has the highest 340B exposure rate of any state in this series: in 65 percent of the consumer bankruptcy filings we reviewed, a 340B-participating nonprofit hospital appears as a creditor. Aurora Health Care alone appears in 48 of 104 filings.

That concentration means a small number of dominant systems' reporting practices determine what Wisconsin patients can, and cannot, see about how billions in discount savings are used.

We are not asking Congress to end 340B. We are asking it to require that hospitals show their work.

If you have experienced medical debt, collections, or bankruptcy connected to healthcare costs, we want to hear from you. Share your story and help bring transparency and accountability to the healthcare system.