Insurance Info

I received two replies that I thought may be helpful to share concerning the insurance issue previously posted. Hopefully they might be helpful for families like ours that struggle to find insurance answers.

Also, I found the following organization, Coalition for Affordable Health Care, that has data, facts and info about current insurance initiatives, bill failures, proposals and more in the US. According to them, 60% of persons in small businesses is uninsured. Other uninsured majorities include minorities, self-employed and high-risk individuals.

We became pregnant with our son right after my husband had graduated from college, so we were on the state health care plan. The entire pregnancy we were unemployed as my husband searched desperately for a job. Two weeks
before Jacob was born He found employment with a great company with decent benefits.

Being on the state health plan, if you are pregnant when you are on it they are obligated to cover all the pregnancy, birth and one year after. So, we got lucky, even though we had other insurance by the time he was born - his
surgery, everything was covered 100% - we never saw a bill. We realized how fortunate we were as we visited with other families who were still trying to pay their hospital bills.

A year later my husband switched companies and there was to be a period before benefits would start - everyone would be covered under cobra - except our son. Luckily the new employers used the same insurance company, so we were able to keep from breaking coverage. It is a hard reality to us that my husband would need to stay employed with a company that offered great benefits becuase we wouldn't be able to find insurance for our son otherwise. We looked at other supplemental things and it is always the same - no coverage for our son. We considered
doing some of those life insurance things for children - no coverage for him. We've been more fortunate than most - I just don't know how they manage it.

There is a lot of pressure. Any time my husband considers looking for new employment, benefits are a MAJOR factor - as well as not wanting to move away and leave our awesome doctors who know us and our situation so well. I can't help either, we have 5 children (our fifth born in December - almost 2 months old now) and I stay at home with them and teach piano lessons, so like in your family, the responsibility to ensure our son lies on my husbands shoulders. I feel guilty too not being able to do more to help.
--Julia

California Children’s Services will pay for your child’s cardiac care until she is 21 years of age. She should also be eligible for MediCal as well or maybe Healthy Families. I see middle income and lower income families that have the same problem. Check out the webpage of http://www.dhs.ca.gov/pcfh/cms/ccs/ to see if you are eligible.
--Norene

NOTE: Norene has been kind enough to offer to look further into this with other states. To my knowledge, the state in which I reside (Virginia) does not have a program under which we can be covered, as a family of 4 (which is what we are) must make $42k or less to qualify.

Thank you, ladies, for sharing your information and stories!