My family's SCHIP tragedy
Wed Aug 22, 2007 at 10:12:47 AM PDT
Many diarists have written about GW's recent attack on the SCHIP system. We are universally outraged at our President's actions, and join each other in the hope that our Congress can defeat him on this issue.
For those of you who don't have immediate experience with our broken health care system and have not yet been directly affected by these events, I hope that my story will give you the context you need to understand what's really at stake.
When my husband and I brought our first child into the world, we were living the American dream. We had about $11,000 in our savings account, no credit card debt, and plenty of equity in our home to fall back on. My husband made more than enough money to support our family on his own, so I quit my job when I was only 3 months pregnant. I was looking forward to being a stay-at-home mother.
I became pregnant with our second child when my son was only 10 months old. I was already sixth months along with my daughter when my son was diagnosed with autism. If I could have seen the future, I probably would not have had a second child. Our worst fears were realized when our daughter was also diagnosed with autism at the age of 19 months.
Our insurance company has denied coverage for most of my children's medical bills. The services which they do cover are accompanied by deductibles and co-payments so high that they can only be described as punitive. With every doctor's appointment costing as much as $800, and with uncovered behavioral and speech therapy bills mounting, we were beginning to feel the pinch. Add to that the legal fees incurred while battling our school district to get appropriate services for our children, and it wasn't long before we had exhausted our savings, maxed out the equity in our home, and accrued almost $20,000 in credit card debt.
My husband's company shut down most of it's operations in December. He found another job almost immediately, for more money. Great, right? No. We were given a choice: work as a contractor with no benefits, or become an employee with a $20,000 per year pay cut. We decided to take the contractor package and enroll in COBRA through my husband's previous employer. Our payments were about $1200 per month.
After subtracting our $14,400 per year COBRA expenses, it turned out that my husband was making about the same amount of money in his new job as his old. With the never ending barrage of uncovered bills, however, and the payments on our mounting debt, we were having trouble getting by. Last month we had to make a choice: keep the health insurance or pay the mortgage.
We now have no insurance.
My home state of New Jersey is one of those criticized by the Bush administration for extending the SCHIP program too far into the middle class. In New Jersey, a family of four can make as much as $80,000 per year and still qualify for SCHIP. In GW's opinion, these families make more than enough money to afford private health care coverage, and qualifying them for SCHIP would just encourage them to take advantage of a public program they don't really need. That's sounds reasonable to many people, I'm sure. Maybe it won't sound so reasonable when I tell you this: Even according to my state's generous standards, may family does not qualify for SCHIP.
We are too "wealthy" to get medical care for our children.
Just in case you're thinking that my case is unusual, let me give you a few facts:
From the
US Department of Health and Human Services:
"One in four Americans with health insurance are still underinsured -- meaning they are often using up their savings or turning to credit cards to cover medical expenses, according to a survey in the September Consumer Reports."
This is why, according to the same report, that our private health care system is failing not only the 45 million Americans without insurance, but a good portion of those who are supposedly covered, as well:
"Four out of 10 Americans can't count on having health insurance when they need it," said senior project editor Nancy Metcalf, the article's author. "This includes people who don't have health insurance, but also the 3-in-10 people whose health insurance is so bad or so costly to them that are having trouble accessing and paying for medical care."
From CreditCards.com:
"...low- and middle-income households with medical debt shouldered an average of $11,623 in credit card debt, versus $7,964 for households with no medical debts on their credit card accounts."
From the Washington Post:
"Why are Americans so deeply in debt? It's not because they are using credit cards to buy plasma TVs and premium coffee drinks at Starbucks. The real culprits, according to a new analysis, are the rising costs of housing, health care and education."
Even the medical community can see the problem:
"Many bankruptcies in this country are the result of medical illness, even though the majority of debtors have health insurance at the start of their illness.
Americans are accumulating household medical debt. Two new studies reveal that medical debt is a significant problem, even for those who have health insurance. The findings suggest that the ills of the American health care system are not confined to the margins of society.
A report last month in the journal Health Affairs stated that medical problems contribute to about half of all bankruptcies in the United States..."
I could go on for twenty pages citing experts from a dozen disciplines who are all saying the same thing: Americans can no longer afford to subsidize the private, for-profit health insurance industry.
I don't know what's going to happen to my family. National Health Care, if it does come, won't come soon enough for us. What I'm worried about now is whether or not it will come soon enough for the rest of you. The middle class Americans who GW thinks so capable of handling this problem on their own, have been beaten. We've spent our prosperity financing the insurance industry.
Twenty years from now, will we be wondering what happened to the American Middle Class? Or will we listen to the facts, obey the admonitions of reason, and follow in the footsteps of the rest of the First World nations whom we used to boldly lead?
While our nation drowns in medical debt, our government has been hijacked by a party who's willing to spend more money dodging bombs in Iraq than they are insuring children. Next time you meet someone who's not sure how they'll be voting, please remind them what's at stake. The lives of my son, my daughter, and millions more American children depend on what we decide at the polls in 2008.
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