When Amanda wrote to us a few months ago with her health care story, she said she was carefully weighing insurance options for her family. By the time we arrived last week in Weiser, Idaho at the home she shares with husband Jason and 18-month-old Kwei, she’d made a decision: After their next child is born in December, she’s canceling health insurance for herself and Kwei.

Jason, a second grade teacher, has insurance through the school but adding his wife and son onto the policy would cost $760 a month. Instead they opted for an individual policy at $360 a month.

With a $1,000 deductible and $20 doctor visit co-pays, the plan’s out-of-pocket costs were manageable, especially since Amanda and Kwei are healthy and almost never to go to the doctor. It was a plan that worked out fine – until Amanda became pregnant with their second child and was shocked to realize the fine print included a $5,000 deductible for maternity coverage, plus 20% of all costs after that.

Amanda estimates those costs, plus adding a new baby onto her individual policy, will mean nearly 50% of their income this year will be spent on health care. Something’s got to give.

After the baby is born in December, Amanda has decided they will cancel the individual plan and she and Kwei will live uninsured. The money they would have spent on that coverage will instead go towards paying off the bills from the baby’s birth. They have to pay down that debt, but they can’t afford all of these health care expenses at the same time.

It’s not the choice Amanda wants to make, but she doesn’t see any other way. She wonders: if people like them are having a hard time budgeting to afford health insurance, what about people that have a lot of credit card debt, or are bad with money?

What should be the happiest of times for this young couple is overshadowed by health care costs as they make sacrifices to afford to have a second child. Amanda said: “I am angry, completely stressed out, and sad. How can insurance companies be allowed to take this much of a family's income? How is this legal?"

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comments (5)

Comments

1 Posted by Pat at 08/14/08 08:11 PM

If you were illegal without insurance, you could present at the ER department in labor and the baby would be delivered under medicaid. However, since you are American and working, you pay. Seems like we should all become illegal.

2 Posted by Amanda B. at 08/15/08 03:00 AM

Hi guys, thanks for the visit.

I just thought I would add our experience trying to get CHIP coverage for Kwei. Eventhough our income qualifies us for the CHIP program, we were told that the purpose of CHIP was to help insure uninsured children. Because Kwei is currently insured, we do not qualify despite the fact that we can't afford it. When I asked then if I could take Kwei off of our plan and then reapply for CHIP, I was told that we would be disqualified because we were trying to "trick" them. I was informed that if a child is currently insured then it was obvious that we were not financially in need of CHIP anyway. Talk about a Catch-22.

3 Posted by Amanda B. at 08/18/08 07:38 PM

I would just like to respond to "Pat's" comment. It really annoys me that it is the first comment posted after the story, as if after reading my story, the only people Pat could think of to blame for my predicament are illegal aliens. This is a shame. And frankly, I expect that the lobbyists for hospitals and insurance companies like to push this same sentiment. They feed us this same b.s. all the time, i.e. the reason our costs are so high is because so many people don't pay... or it's because medicare and medicaid don't pay their fare share of the bills. Well, people need to wake up. We are smarter than that. We are all being screwed over, and it has nothing to do with the poor and elderly. It has to do with the immense greed of insurance companies.

And, as an aside, I know for a fact that MANY illegal aliens pay taxes. They have the same things deducted from their paychecks as everyone else. So, illegal or not, they are paying into the system and aren't always getting the free ride many assume. And on this same vein, if we were to create a system where say 10% of your monthly income was automatically deducted from your paycheck to pay for universal health care, GUESS WHAT? Everyone with a legitimate paycheck would be contributing, and that should leave no doubt in people's minds that illegal aliens have a right to healthcare services just like everybody else.

4 Posted by pandreson at 08/23/08 01:23 PM

A constant feature of health care in the United States is our national willingness to tolerate having large numbers of people without health insurance.
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pandreson

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