Health care meme
Aug. 24th, 2009 03:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eustaciavye77*I propose a US health care meme which might help put faces on how screwed up the current system is.
If you are a US citizen and could never under any circumstances afford private health insurance, copy this meme to your LJ. Even if you have health care through work now, write as if your one-layoff-away-from-losing-it has happened and you're facing the job of getting insurance on your own.
If you have friends or family members who are in the same boat and are not on LJ, feel free to mention them too. I suggest thumbnail descriptions which include no names or identifying information, in the interests of privacy.*
I have health insurance through work. I DID lose that once (ironically due to being too sick to work full time for a while) and have to pay private. I ended that year in $6000 of debt. A little of that was just the results of working only part time for 9 months but the cost of private insurance for me for that year was $4800. Needless to say that is not a sustainable situation. I'd need about a 15% pay increase to be able to even attempt paying for my own insurance. Now, I am one person. The payroll deduction at my job if I were say, a single mom with two kids would be roughly 3 times what it is now. If I had been in the above circumstances with two kids, the cost of private insurance for that year would have tripled.
Nowadays, if I were to find myself in that situation I'd be eligible for Commonwealth care which is a version of Mass Health for people who are above the poverty line but not far enough above it to pay $300-400 a month for health insurance and who don't get it through their jobs. I am grateful for this. I'm also not moving out of massachusetts until the entire country has some sort of equivalent.
EDIT: I just found out I have a friend in another state who is off dialysis because they have no insurance. DIALYSIS PEOPLE.
If you are a US citizen and could never under any circumstances afford private health insurance, copy this meme to your LJ. Even if you have health care through work now, write as if your one-layoff-away-from-losing-it has happened and you're facing the job of getting insurance on your own.
If you have friends or family members who are in the same boat and are not on LJ, feel free to mention them too. I suggest thumbnail descriptions which include no names or identifying information, in the interests of privacy.*
I have health insurance through work. I DID lose that once (ironically due to being too sick to work full time for a while) and have to pay private. I ended that year in $6000 of debt. A little of that was just the results of working only part time for 9 months but the cost of private insurance for me for that year was $4800. Needless to say that is not a sustainable situation. I'd need about a 15% pay increase to be able to even attempt paying for my own insurance. Now, I am one person. The payroll deduction at my job if I were say, a single mom with two kids would be roughly 3 times what it is now. If I had been in the above circumstances with two kids, the cost of private insurance for that year would have tripled.
Nowadays, if I were to find myself in that situation I'd be eligible for Commonwealth care which is a version of Mass Health for people who are above the poverty line but not far enough above it to pay $300-400 a month for health insurance and who don't get it through their jobs. I am grateful for this. I'm also not moving out of massachusetts until the entire country has some sort of equivalent.
EDIT: I just found out I have a friend in another state who is off dialysis because they have no insurance. DIALYSIS PEOPLE.
