Tuesday's Number: $1,766,483

Tuesday is the day my local paper, the Syracuse Post-Standard, publishes the weekly business section. In addition to special features, tips from stock experts, budgeting advice and the like, we get the judgment and bankruptcy listings.  

As I did for much of last year, I will be tracking health care related filings. I include anything that is clearly a debt owed to a hospital, nursing home, physician or physician group, medical supplier, and so on; I do not include filings by insurance companies, many of which are so diversified it would not be a fair assumption that the filing is related to medical care or health insurance.  Note that the paper only publishes accounts of at least $5,000.

We have a milestone today -- it's the first time this year the weekly total has reached seven figures. Not much cause for celebration, really, but a milestone none-the-less.

This week, thirty-five people were listed with new judgments totaling $1,586,421 to hospitals, doctors, or other medical providers.  This is more than double the previous high week for this year, and a couple hundred thousand dollars higher than the highest total during the 24 weeks I tracked these figures last year.

This week, two people were listed as having satisfied judgments totaling $49,908 to a hospital, doctor, or other medical provider.  

And finally, this week there were two health-care related bankruptcies listed, totaling $130,148, easily the highest bankruptcy figure we've had in many weeks; in fact, this week's total is greater than the previous twelve weeks combined.