Cross-posted at DailyKos (oh, the stories being posted).
To keep health coverage, reports Los Angeles Times reporter Daniel Costello, “more workers are cutting back on food, heat and other necessities. Still, many of them eventually will lose the battle.” (More from the article, “At What Cost?,” below the fold, with a poll.)
How do you juggle expenses? What necessities do you give up to keep health coverage? Or, if you have no health coverage, how do you cope?
Examples of how people sacrifice:
Peggy McPhee, a 52-year-old bridal dressmaker in Santa Rosa, spends more than a quarter of her salary on health insurance. She’s recently given up her cellphone, buys clothing only at garage sales and no longer turns on her heat in the winter.
Ron Dybas, of Los Banos, chose to close his lumber company two months ago after 17 years in business. He says he took a job with a company that offers benefits after he no longer could afford to spend nearly a third of his income insuring his family.
“As employees continue to absorb more of their healthcare costs, an increasing number of people — even healthy ones — are drastically altering their lives simply to hold on to their insurance,” reports the LA Times.
Many people, especially lower- and middle-class workers and the chronically ill, are beginning to spend a once-unimaginable share of their income on health coverage. In some cases, health costs have become the single biggest expense in family budgets.
Between 2000 and 2004, the number of people spending more than 25% of their earnings on healthcare — a figure normally associated with homeownership — rose by nearly a fourth to 14.3 million people, according to Washington, D.C.-based Families USA, a healthcare advocacy group. Over the same period, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, health premiums rose an average of 59%; federal data show the average employee’s earnings rose 12.4%.
“Healthcare has always been expensive. But it’s become more than that now,” says Glenn Melnick, a Rand Corp. economist and a USC professor of healthcare finance. “How much of someone’s income is too much to spend on healthcare? 10%? 30%?”
“More people are nearing a tipping point,” says Mark Goldberg, senior vice president for policy at the National Coalition on Health Care. …
Is paying the portion of my taxes that is currently going to killing people in my name and instead have it fund national health insurance for everyone.
Of course, that’s not bloody likely.
As it is, I’m self-employed and pay for my own absolutely horrible insurance, which really only kicks in for catastrophic care.
We basically give up luxuries — going out to dinners, movies, renting movies, etc. — to pay for health insurance, so while it’s a crimp, it’s not (as of yet) eliminating our necessities.
But if it goes up anymore (it’s 25% of our family budget), this certainly will happen.
I would like to see that too. After all, if no US funds can go to international family planning groups who provide abortion services because the pro-lifers don’t their taxes paying for that, how come we can’t decide the same about not wanting our tax dollars going to kill people in Iraq and othre countries? I have moral values too!
I am self-employed, and have to foot the bill for my own health insurance. Since the end of 2001, my premiums have increased from $450/month to $620/month, a roughly 40% increase. Because I am in graduate school, this has become increasingly difficult (and painful) to pay along with tuition. Last fall, I chose to pay my tuition instead of my health insurance.
Well, on election night last November, I choked on a piece of chicken (partly due to my long-ignored allergic esophagitis, partly due to my anxiety over what I was watching unfold on TV), and wound up with an $800 emergency room visit, followed by a $1000 endoscopy. Thankfully, it was not catastrophic, and I’ve learned my lesson without it being too devastating.
I am now back to paying both health insurance and tuition, and wondering why, when I make what even I think is a good salary, I have such a hard time paying for both. I have a 7-year-old car, a modest home, and 2 kids. It shouldn’t be this hard to afford health insurance, but it is. And I know many other people who are worse off than I am.
I hope others will share their health insurance experiences here. And if anyone knows of a way to get adequate coverage for less $, please share!
I got two tuition-free graduate degrees and health insurance by working for the universities I attended. The second time was fun, because I took a low-paying secretarial job that was easy and I never had to take the job home with me. The benefits were worth the extra time it took.
It wouldn’t work for everybody, but it was great for me!
Good for you! It sounds like it was more fun than work!
I wish I could do that, but it’s not an option (too many responsibilities at this point with 2 kids and a house). It wasn’t so bad a few years ago, but the insurance premiums have really skyrocketed in the past few years.
Luckily, my office is in my house, so the rising cost of gas isn’t hurting me as bad as some people. Guess I won’t complain too much.
I’m ‘self-employed’ but am on my wife’s insurance, and her’s is paid for 100% by her ’employer’ (she’s a research fellow), so I’m lucky. That’ll change soon though since she’s changing jobs this year.
The healthcare system in this country is so FUBAR that I don’t even know where to begin. From the ridiculous incomprehensible explanation of benefits statements that you get from your health insurance provider after a doctor’s visit (where you see how the doctor billed $500 for a 10 minute office visit but the insurance company only allows $3.50 — and you can’t get charged beyond your co-pay) to health insurance “customer service” people who give conflicting answers to nearly any question you ask, to doctors who bitch about malpractice premiums but who also don’t push their state medical boards to actually deal with bad doctors (not true in all states), to unreasonable patients, to idiot politicians who promise fixes yet only screw things up more because they take baby steps intead of just starting from scratch, to medical costs that outpace inflation every single year (one night hospital stays can cost a bundle)…
Arrrrgh….
A few years ago, it would have cost $650/month for me alone. I haven’t applied since, because the applications I’ve seen ask if you’ve ever been turned down for insurance. I don’t want to say no.
I was diagnosed with glaucoma a few years ago, and it is perfectly controlled with medication. My eye doctor charges a lower rate for uninsured patients, so I spend a few hundred dollars a year paying for that. Other doctors I see, I just pay cash — $50 here, $150 there. It’s much, much less than so-called health insurance.
I’m still looking around for something to cover emergencies, but at 56 I’m not sure I want to go through too much medical care. I worked for a medical school in a clinical department, and have a certain cynicism. I also learned the concept of “self-insurance,” keeping a little aside for the big things and paying the small things. So far, so good. I’d pay at least $7800 per year for health insurance, and I pay less than $1000 for medical care (excluding prescriptions).
Maybe I’ll get Medicare in a few years (if B* doesn’t kill it).
I am currently covered by my husband’s insurance. Before that I was covered by Medicare/Medicaid. Before that, for a couple of decades, I was self-employed and paid for medical services as needed. After the first couple of years, I realized that even paying for doctor visits and prescriptions at full price actually worked out to be less than what I would have spent on monthly insurance payments. Hey, I was young, then, and relatively healthy. But, I also discovered that, if I merely asked, many doctors were willing to charge me a discounted rate because their staff didn’t have to fill out paperwork. On bigger bills, many were willing to work out a payment plan. It was a revelation!
The best example was how a procedure that originally started out costing $2400 was reduced to $60. You see, I, um (blush) got a friggin’ boil on my butt. I went to the nearest doc-in-a-box to get it lanced and was told they couldn’t perform “general surgery.” WTF? I was charged $25 for a referral.
The general surgeon started out by saying he could schedule the surgery for the following day at the hospital with which he was associated. I told him I did not have insurance and would he mind telling me exactly how much all this was going to cost. $2400. I said I didn’t have that kind of money and would he break down the costs so we could see what could be eliminated.
To make a long story short, after haggling for close to an hour, we both realized that all I needed to do was sign a waiver that would protect him from medical malpractice. I clenched a tongue depressor between my teeth and the damned thing was lanced in less than a second. It was completely healed within a few days.
The moral of the story is haggle for your health care and you might be surprised at how many doctors would love to eliminate all the middle men that stand between you and affordable services.
Haggling IS effective. My above-mentioned endoscopy should have cost around $3000, but they had a special rate for uninsured folks if you paid at the time of service. The GI specialist only charged me $30 for an office visit for the same reason.
of knowing Americans are protected from socialized medicine.
And the smiles on the faces of pharmaceutical and medical industry execs and investors is a bonus that makes any sacrifice a joy.
From the Seattle Times today:
After reading the comments here, I have to admit, that it is a sad state of affairs, when the people of this country have to relate to such actions, to achieve what should be ours, Health Care.
Now, do the math, if each and every “working” person, would pay $1.00 for each day worked, rich, middle, whatever class you want to call it. This country could have sufficient health care, for all.
The people out of work would be covered as well. The government should put caps on the fees, as well open up the borders for competitive drug companies.
Call this a pipe dream, but it could, and should be a reality. This is not a free ride, we would pay, but only $240+ bucks a year.
Now take the total population of the US, and multiply it by that number, or even let’s say $300, now that’s a pretty hefty number. The companies would pay a matching amount, which would be tax deductable for the corps. Now you have something that works.
Instead, we’re reduced to living without, care, needs, or any comprehensible solution, all for the greed of the robber-baron’s that are trying to take total control.
I get so damned frustrated, as to why, something so simple, can get so complicated.
I’ll stop now before I go into a rant on health care, oil prices, on, and on and on….nevermind.