Insurance

This is the big thing for everyone. I don’t care if you make a three-figure salary, you still stress about how much healthcare costs. In honesty, this is probably the biggest reason we have had trouble saving money. Even when we had jobs that brought in a modest middle-class income, it seemed like every time we started make progress and were able to put a little into savings, we would get hit by some big medical expense. If you are a single and healthy adult, or even one of those DINK (Dual Income, No Kids) families, you probably don’t have to worry about it. But if you are among the many aging Babyboomers in this country or a young family, you’re basically screwed.
Right now our kids have no insurance, though we have applied for assistance on that. I’m sure it will come through, but it does make me nervous. My kids have a cold right now. It’s not bad, but I’m just waiting for the other shoe to drop. My son has developed lung infections from colds that have required ER visits, and my daughter has had burst eardrums from ear infections. As many parents will attest, when you have a child, you never know when a cold can become something more.
We’ve had our taste of just about every kind of health insurance.
In Massachusetts, we had United Auto Workers Union healthcare because my husband was philosophy graduate teaching assistant. Yeah, I know it makes a lot of sense doesn’t it? Any way, it was pretty sweet. They only problem was we had to drive about 45 minutes to get to our regular doctor. On the plus side, there were no co-pays at all! Even for emergency room visits, childbirth and hospital stays! Ahh, that was the good life.
In California, we got to experience the wonderful HMO goliath called Kaiser Permanente. I always thought the name sounded so ominous. It’s like they are announcing that the will become our permanent rulers, in a very Nazi Germany kind of way. It was fairly affordable, especially since my husband’s job paid our premium, but we still ended up with a $2,500 bill for our daughter’s birth. It took us 2 years on our lease-to-own plan to finally pay off our daughter. Our son racked up quite a few ER visit bills too because he always managed to hurt himself right at 6 p.m., when his regular doctor’s office was closed. One quick trip to check if he needed stitches when his tooth broke through his lip cost over $100. When he actually needed stitches -glue stitches that is - the cost went up to $500. That’s a lot of money when you are living pay-check to pay-check.
Next, we had regular old health insurance you get from a normal job, where you pay part of the premium and you have a fairly large deductible. I remember being outraged when my daughter’s vaccines cost us $400! Again, just as we started making progress our bills and were able to start saving, it all had to go to pay the doctors.
Now we are in insurance limbo. For student health insurance, the price isn’t too bad, but add the wife (me) and kids, and the insurance premium would have been close to $13,000. Given that right now we have an estimated $14,000 a year to live on until I can find some work, that just wasn’t possible. So, we split the difference. I got on student insurance with my husband, even though technically we can’t afford it and we are waiting to hear back if our kids qualify for Peach Care. Peach Care is Georgia’s version of Medicaid for children. By an act of Congress, every state must provide a way for children of the working poor to be insured at little or no cost. It’s a wonderful idea, and I’m so grateful for it. Not just for us, but it makes me sleep better at night knowing that any kid in the United States can be insured if the parents are willing to seek help.
Now for the controversial stuff. I’m not in favor of in the health care bill that was recently passed. I am in favor of some kind of healthcare reform, but I think the one that was passed was pushed through for political reasons. I remember reading that one politician said he hadn’t read the whole bill, but knew said that didn’t matter. He said the important thing was to pass it, and if it didn’t work, we could just fix it later. That’s the government for you. Pure genius.
I know enough about the medical industry to know that a big reason why everything costs so much is because the insurance companies are taking everyone -including hospitals and doctors - for a ride. So, why would you create a plan that forces everyone to buy insurance. What a pig-headed thing to do. People are uninsured because they can’t afford it, so I’m going to make them buy it anyway by threatening them with a penalty if they don’t.
The peasants can’t afford bread, so let them eat cake.