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Kids Health Insurance Being Skipped
By Mommie | October 23, 2008
The LA Times had a good article about a seemingly disturbing trend in America, that’s the skipping or skimping of childrens health insurance due to the cost. It is true that many people have to make hard decisions when faced with the cost of not only their own health insurance, but that of all of their dependents as well. With an estimated 9 million children in the US without health insurance, it’s a sad fact to face that this trend is actually increasing…
It’s not just the fact that many children aren’t insured, there’s more to it then that. There is also the coverage gap, which is ever widening. This coverage gap means that even though children may be “covered”, the coverage that they have is little to none and won’t cover much of anything. There are numerous plans out there where the amount of the monthly health insurance is very small, due to the huge price you’ll end up paying on the back end. A regular visit to the pediatrician could run you hundreds of dollars.
Indeed there are also those with no health insurance, even though a parent can get the health insurance through an employer. The cost is huge. I remember when I was in charge of the health payments when our company was shutting down (back in the “Mommies NOT Home” days, lol). Cobra, the payment you can usually make to keep your health insurance until you can replace it with something else, was insanely high. For a family it was well over $1,200 a month. We currently pay around $550 a month for our whole family, it is high, but it’s definitely worth having. If it was just my husband being covered it would be little to nothing.
So what do my readers think? Is it ok to skip your kids on coverage? Is it worth the savings?
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Topics: Babies, Everyday Mommie, School Agers |
October 25th, 2008 at 10:45 pm
Sometimes it’s just not a choice. At my previous job, even though my employer paid almost 100% of the employee’s health insurance premium, they paid nothing toward dependent or spouse care. Care for dependents was over $300 per month for the first child, and over $500 for more than one child. Spousal coverage was $600. When you are just barely getting by to start with (which is so many of us these days), $300 a month is the difference between buying groceries or going hungry for many families.