Jen Sorensen, the genius behind the Slowpoke comic, recently created a series of comics for Kaiser Health News. You should go view them here, but in case you need some incentive, here’s the first one:
Her experience mirrors mine (with the exception of the birth control pill part), when I was working on my own and had to buy an individual health insurance plan. Even if you are lucky enough to have health insurance from your employer, you are still liable to go bankrupt if you have some major health problems.
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I’m wondering if the cost of healthcare itself will start to drive people into bankruptcy if the mandate holds.
I too am a a corporation of one, but if not for being retired military and having access to government provided healthcare, I would be working somewhere that provides employee health insurance (although everyone I know has seen their share of cost go up) I have a friend who freelances as a book reviewer. She told me what she pays. yikes! As for the mandate… there are provisions and exceptions in the law that would probably prevent people from bankruptcy if the mandate were to stand. Don’t think so? How many have gone bankrupt in Mass.? While people, far too many, without insurance declare bankruptcy everyday. These are not “deadbeats” these are people who work hard all their lives only to lose everything in one illness, they don’t qualify for medicaid until what they’ve worked for all their life is gone.
Same here. A mom and pop software company in decent health (with kids having regular kid illnesses) seeing my rates increase anywhere from 9-19% per year and covering less. I have had to pay shot charges on immunizations for my children while the republicans gripe about Obamacare and yettake their kids to the public health offices to get vaccines for $10 because insurance is too damn high for them to have.
$600 a month not including meds for a total of $13,000 a year for a single person before I went on Medicare. Now it is “only” $6000 a year.