No health insurance? Not good
Posted
Aug 03 2009, 03:08 PM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
In recognition of the national debate over health care reform, which is about to move front and center, here are two brief histories of bloggers without health insurance.
One is about David, who decided to go without. The other is the story of Leanne at Mrs. Bankrupt, who recently penned a three-part series called "Sick? No insurance. No doctor. You're screwed."
We'll start with David at Goliath Debt, David Income, who was so focused on paying down his colossal debt that he skimped when he shouldn't have -- his wife and his newborn baby aren't insured and it's proven to be quite costly.
First, there were complications during the delivery. "To make matters worse, my wife had an eclamptic seizure on Monday afternoon, something that happens in only rare cases after the birth," he said in a post called "I gambled, and I lost. Big time." "An ambulance ride, three additional nights in the hospital, and thousands of dollars later, I arrive at the end of this week not really knowing where to go from here."
The hospital presented two options for paying the bill. "They said I could either put it on a credit card, and they would give me a discount (about 70%), or they could allow me to send in whatever I could, but it would be for the full amount, and at 18% interest," he wrote. The discounted amount is on his credit card, at 15% interest. Doctors' bills aren't included.
Leanne was undergoing chemotherapy and radiation treatments for a Stage 3 cancer 10 years ago when her husband's business went bust and her health insurance went with it. The marriage failed, the medical bills piled up and she eventually wound up in bankruptcy court.
At the time, she said, "Nearly all the unenlightened told me about the ‘can't-turn-you-down' program my state offered. Based on two kinds of cancer, two life-threatening blood clots, and a latent heart problem, my ‘can't-turn-you-down' premium (would have been) $774 a month AND covered NO preventative care (like the very scans I needed to track any reoccurrences)."
With five kids to feed and limited child support, she simply couldn't afford it.
She's still without health insurance, and the bills are mounting again. "Being uninsured for a healthy person is, I am sure, difficult. Being uninsured for a person who needs 10K a year in scans, blood work, thyroid medicine, and has a low immune system is beyond difficult," she wrote.
David's decision not to insure his family did not go unnoticed in the personal-finance blogosphere.
"He took a gamble without health insurance and is now going to pay through the nose," wrote "LAL" at Living Almost Large. "... I am guessing they are in their 20s, great health, never see the doctor, had an uneventful pregnancy and figured, what could happen?"
"Dog" at Dog Ate My Finances also read David's story. She knew that when she became unemployed, she needed to be insured but faced a complicated decision. She had the choice of an expensive COBRA (the family income is too high for her to qualify for the federal subsidy) or individual health insurance that would exclude her asthma.
She wrote: "I could really use some help here. I feel like I have no idea what I am doing in the wild west of individual health care plans. The fact that I even have to make this choice -- $1,200/month for COBRA, or $200/month with no asthma coverage -- pretty much makes me want to cry." Readers offered lots of advice. You can read about the outcome here.
Related reading:
America's health insurance crisis
Study: 60% of bankruptcies caused by health care costs
Buy your own health plan
10 things your hospital won't tell you
