She gets paid for this?

I never bother with Meagan McArdle, so all I read was the headline "What causes personal bankruptcy?" and the blurb on this post. I refuse to link to her, but if you're curious you can find it here at Memeorandum. Here's the blurb:

I was going to cite job loss as a major cause of bankruptcy in the previous post, which is the conventional wisdom. But this paper argues it isn't true: … According to Zhu, having a serious medical condition makes you 50% more likely to file for bankruptcy …

As far as I know catastrophic medical expenses as the major cause of bankruptcy is the conventional wisdom and has been widely known, and cited as such, for years. She's just figuring this out? Can anyone explain to me why she gets the big gig and is allowed to blog about anything to do with economics?

[More posts daily at The Detroit News.]