Medical costs cause more than 60 percent of all personal bankruptcies. "I became homeless and our entire family has had to live with a friend several times," wrote a patient in a recent study excerpted in Duke Health. Other patients noted they went without groceries to pay for medicines. Even if you don't go bankrupt, paying for cancer treatment or other bills that stretch or exceed your insurance can be devastating—not just financially, but emotionally. Wrote another patient, "My parents pay my medical bills, which is humiliating when I worked 27 years as a teacher."