The only way to address this is to understand whether the medical bills are temporary or likely to be on-going ?
If it is likely to be on-going, then they are going to go bankrupt anyway. They probably should have considered bankruptcy before draining their pensions.
Their best bet is to negotiate scheduled payments with the hospitals/providers for their debt. They can probably get some of it written down and effectively get a zero interest rate loan by requesting to make payments.
