Survey, In the U.S., the federal government does not guarantee universal healthcare to all its citizens, but publicly funded healthcare programs help to provide for the elderly, disabled, the poor, and children. The Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act or EMTALA also ensures public access to emergency services. The EMTALA law forces emergency healthcare providers to stabilize an emergency health crisis and cannot withhold treatment for lack of evidence of insurance coverage or other evidence of the ability to pay. EMTALA does not absolve the person receiving emergency care of the obligation to meet the cost of emergency healthcare not paid for at the time and it is still within the right of the hospital to pursue any debtor for the cost of emergency care provided. In Canada, emergency room treatment for legal Canadian residents is not charged to the patient at time of service but is met by the government. According to the United States Census Bureau, 59.3% of U.S. citizens have health insurance related to employment, 27.8% have government-provided health-insurance; nearly 9% purchase health insurance directly (there is some overlap in these figures), and 15.3% (45.7 million) were uninsured in 2007. An estimated 25 percent of the uninsured are eligible for government programs but unenrolled. About a third of the uninsured are in households earning more than $50,000 annually. A 2003 report by the Congressional Budget Office found that many people lack health insurance only temporarily, such as after leaving one employer and before a new job. The number of chronically uninsured (uninsured all year) was estimated at between 21 and 31 million in 1998. Another study, by the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured, estimated that 59 percent of uninsured adults have been uninsured for at least two years. One indicator of the consequences of Americans' inconsistent health care coverage is a study in Health Affairs that concluded that half of personal bankruptcies involved medical bills. Although other sources dispute this, it is possible that medical debt is the principal cause of bankruptcy in the United States. A number of clinics provide free or low-cost non-emergency care to poor, uninsured patients. The National Association of Free Clinics claims that its member clinics provide $3 billion in services to some 3.5 million patients annually. A peer-reviewed comparison study of healthcare access in the two countries published in 2006 concluded that U.S. residents are one third less