Health care...again

[pegkerr]

This is up close and personal for my family. cathschaffstump reminded me to mention that jimhines wrote a great post last week about health care (here also). Besides some excellent facts and figures, he talks about the recent death of Melissa Mia Hall, who died of a heart attack because she didn't have health care and was afraid to go to the doctor to have her chest pain checked.

We have a (very) high deductible plan. Until we hit that deductible, our prescriptions cost us hundreds of dollars each month, money that is melting away faster than I would like, with no job in sight for Rob. It's scary. My family shouldn't have to go through this. No family should.

Comments

[elements]

I am so grateful I live in Massachusetts. Our system is not perfect but when my COBRA ran out, I was able to buy a health plan on the Massachusetts exchange, and I got to weigh my own priorities, so I picked a higher premium but no deductible plan, that has no "co-insurance" percentages for lab or other tests, because I know how expensive my thyroid labs and ultrasounds are and there's no way I'm paying 35% of them while unemployed. If I made less in my unemployment (I am very lucky I still have it!), I'd be eligible for subsidized care (I might be still, but the application took too long in processing and I've been without insurance for Jan and Feb, so I bit the bullet for March - and am just glad it was there to bite, yaknow?).

Our system isn't perfect, but I really wish the rest of the country had the options MA does. This experience has done a lot to convince me that despite some tempting possibilities, I don't want to move to any other state, because at least here there is something like a safety net that actually catches you. I am better off staying here, even paying my Boston-area rent, and having access to health care, than I would be moving back with my parents in upstate NY and being at the mercy of fate. I would be better off sleeping on someone's couch and still making premiums instead of rent if it came down to it. I still have 2 weeks to go before my insurance kicks in and I am just crossing my fingers that I can stay healthy, and not slip on the ice and break anything like happened to my dad recently (if my parents hadn't been insured, they'd have been hit so so hard by the surgery for that). This is the first time in my life without insurance and I never ever want to go through even a short period like this again.