Care for kids when they need it
Health care is an issue that uniquely affects families. I remember as a poor, childless graduate student, I didn’t give much thought to being uninsured for a year or two. But this is a risk few parents voluntarily take. Kids get sick. My son’s brief hospital stay for RSV last year would have set us back more than $6,000 if it weren’t for insurance. And there is all the routine and preventative care that children require. The proportion of our income that having adequate coverage costs us has grown and grown. Especially in this era of stagnant wages. So I’m paying close attention to the health-care debate and hoping fervently that amid all the rancor some meaningful reform will emerge. Because this time it’s our children that will pay if this thing gets shelved for another generation.
Tags: Finances, health care
This entry was posted on Monday, August 17th, 2009 at 5:39 pm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
August 18th, 2009 at 6:49 am
Ruby says:I read your blog every time you post it, as I am a Durango parent looking to keep my in-exhaustible 2 yr. exhausted. While I appreciate your efforts in that department (love the calendar), I cannot help but feel that politics have no place here.
The health care debacle is being shouted at from all sides. The corruption of the current system has run rampant. Your son’s surgery was allowed to cost that much. Insurance companies across the board knew if they drove the prices of things up, the hospitals and such would be forced to pay. That’s why a cottonball costs $30 during a hospital stay. Before the 90’s ‘healthcare overhaul’ you could still pay a doctor a reasonable rate directly.
Either way you look at it health care is a mess. However charging us and our children and their children and so on, is not the answer either. Taxes are the real cost our kids will be saddled with. How on earth do you expect our future generations to pay off the largest debt in American history? Let alone foot the bill for a problem Washington created in the first place?
Like I said, I enjoy this being a place for kids. Surely the rest of the Herald reports for Obama enough?
August 18th, 2009 at 8:23 am
Kid Row says:Hi Ruby, I appreciate your comments and myself was unsure whether it was worth wading into the health care debate on this space. But in the end I do think that it’s an issue that profoundly affects parents and since this blog is for parents I figured it’s fair game.
It seems that pretty much everyone can agree that there are some serious problems with the current system. What we disagree on is how to fix it. I don’t have the answer to that but my feeling is that by thinking about it and talking about it in a rational matter we can get closer to a solution we can all be (somewhat) happy with. I believe if we tune out now just because it’s gotten contentious then we’re ceding control to the very entities that have caused the system to be so broken. P.S. But don’t worry, I promise to wade into the political stuff very infrequently