take19 - TAKEN!!!

Even though a respected study by Harvard Medical School found that half of all personal bankruptcies were a result of illness or medical bills, Sue Kelly decided to join her fellow Republicans in passing a huge gift to the credit card and banking industry yesterday. The bill, whose pleasant sounding name is the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Act -- after all, who's pro-abuse? -- makes it much more difficult for people to file for bankruptcy, including the more than 40 million Americans who currently lack health insurance. Kelly, who sits on the House Financial Services Committee, has long been an advocate of what she calls bankruptcy reform. Perhaps that's because she accepts oodles of money from the banking and credit card industries, as this chart on Open Secrets shows. Or perhaps its because she doesn't know what it's like to be sick and not have health insurance. Either way, the people of NY's 19th wind up losing.