Comments on: We Need Health Care Reform

By: adjunctmom

adjunctmom — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 19:56:06 +0000

I completely get it and I think it’s a shame that we’re in this situation and that people can’t recognize and understand that whether we do a public option for health care or not, they’re still paying for the folks without insurance. It would almost have to be cheaper to pay for insurance than to pay for the uninsured.

Health care costs have skyrocketed and I’m still not sure why that’s the case. We need to figure that out and then maybe we can get to the root of how to fix the problem.

By: adjunctmom

adjunctmom — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 19:53:49 +0000

I know what you mean. Like I said, P and I went without insurance for the first five years of our marriage. What I didn’t say is he continued without it for several more years. He didn’t want to get on my policy and he didn’t want to pay for the policy at his place of work because we were dealing with paying the expenses for two households (he lived in Virginia while I lived in Alabama).

By: Staceylt

Staceylt — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 00:38:30 +0000

I love this post. This is so true.

When we were younger, we had to choose between buying a house and having health insurance. My husband’s company did not provide coverage and it was that expensive. We chose to buy the house and we went for over a decade with no insurance. We had 3 children, and I had two surgeries, all paid out of pocket and we still came out ahead.

Someone on Twitter suggested to me yesterday that choosing not to buy the health insurance for all those years was irresponsible. I didn’t know how to respond to that. Insured or not, if one of us gets seriously ill, we will be financially ruined.

We have insurance now only because my husband is on active duty in Afghanistan. Army National Guard and Reserve members do not have health coverage when they are not on active duty.

By: barb

barb — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 19:40:11 +0000

I so totally agree! I have a friend, who has had medical issues on and off, and her husband is diabetic. Because he was laid off some time ago and being 60ish can’t easily find another job, they pay for their own insurance. $2500 a month, but its all they can do, they have to have insurance, they would be bankrupt in no time at all, and even with that princely sum the insurance companies nickle and dime them to pieces.

Right now I worry about health insurance constantly. We had a nice policy with the state but silly husband wanted a job that paid more than 11 bucks an hour, and took a real job in his field, as a contractor. We are now on COBRA for 1200 bucks a month, its great insurance, but in another 11 months we will be back to no insurance, and I’ll probably have to quit my job as a professor as I am not full time, and go work at Wal-Mart or Home Depot so we can have insurance. Its crazy, crazy, crazy….

People should not have to go bankrupt because they get sick, people who have money put aside to retire should not have to eagerly wait to turn 65 so they can get Medicare now that they’ve spent all their retirement on insurance.

This is a problem of the last 30 years. In 1978, I had pneumonia, I had no insurance, I spent 7 days in the hospital and the bill was 2500 bucks, a huge sum back then. The hospital wrote it it down to 1900 bucks, the amount insurance would have paid them, and I paid it off at 30 bucks a month, I was a broke grad student.

In 2008, I had pneumonia, I went to the ER, it cost 5700 bucks and I was there for 2 hours!!! I was glad I have insurance, but 2 hours for 5700 bucks, that is just nuts.