I am self employed so I have it through my husband, he works for a small company and although it is good coverage it has very expensive co-pays. Two of my sons are conservatory trained musicians, working musicians, and have no health insurance, and it scares me to death. They are young and healthy for now but we all know that can change in a instant.

As a stay at home full time mother of two children, imagine my surprise to find out, that the day after my husband died our family’s insurance which was a benefit from his job, was discontinued. I was a mother of two children, the main bread winner gone and no insurance for me or my children. First, I found out that COBRA was nearly the same monthly premium as my mortgage. Then I found out that with JUST our Social Security Survivor’s Benefits as income, my income was too high to qualify for any gov’t health insurance for even my kids, let alone me. I had to shop around for insurance. Was turned down by Blue Cross because my kids and I had gone for counseling right after my husband’s death… they said that their policy was that people who attend counseling are a “higher risk”. Then I found a policy that I could just barely afford which kept going up every 6 mos. forcing me to repeatedly give up things and increase the deductable until that insurance policy morphed into one that only covered catastrophic 80/20, covered nothing else, and had a $5,000 per person deductable! Several years later, when I married my husband and he came to the US his first job gave us family health insurance! I cried when I first held that Blue Cross card in my hand. Then about 2 months after the insurance was activated, he was laid off from his job. Our COBRA was $1200 per month and he was out of work. But since I was diagnosed with a condition that does not give me any trouble and could very well never be anything, but is considered pre-existing so we couldn’t go find another private insurance plan with me on it anyway. The next job my husband got provided no insurance, so he got a second one on weekends in order to pay for COBRA. Then when the COBRA ran out 18 mos later we were uninsured. Only about two months ago with his new job did we finally get another employer “paid” insurance, although, it only really helps because I am covered on a group policy now, because the employer is only covers my husband so even with insurance from a job, we are paying $500 per month for me, my youngest son and my daughter. And we’re afraid to go to the doctor because it seems everytime there is a doctor’s visit after the co-pay I start getting bills from labs and doctors amounting to about $400 that go unpaid by the insurance…. and I’m just talking about a basic office visit with maybe one test.

My husband and I are self employed and therefore purchase our own health insurance. Each year the premiums go up and each year we raise our deductibles to try and keep things manageable. Those of you that have health insurance partially provided by your employer should give thanks every day! It costs the two of us $18,000 a year for insurance! He has a stent and I am amazingly healthy! We provided health insurance for out employees as long as possible, but that is no longer an option.

I recieve health insurance through my work. My husband and I have put off having kids because of how much more insurance will cost. (Child care is also weighing in).

I am very Thankful for my health care provided through my job but also upset that its going up so much…My fiance’ and soon to be, in the next 2 months, husband, is a state Trooper and you would think the state would have excellent benefits and they do but the co-pays are higher so we have to sit down and look at how much it would cost him to add both myself and our daughter to his policy or just stay w/ this new stuff my company is giving us next month, effective January. I have a friend whose Mother is from England and she said their Gov’t pays for every child until the age of 18 for full coverage insurance… Amanda Slagle…Childcare is expensive…I pay $162 a week for my daughter to go to daycare. If I could stop it I would for sure. That is a public daycare facility. I have been toying around with the idea of putting her back ito an in home daycare but scared that once she turns 4 and can go to Pre-K she will be behind the other children…I was lucky b/c when I had my daughter I only had to pay $100 deductible and my insurance paid the rest and when I got the breakdown of all the costs…If it had come out of my pocket it would have cost me around $20K…you get charged now from every Doctor, the Hospital, the Nurses, the Nursery your baby stays at…Its crazy!

My husband was an employee with the State. So through his pension, I have a supplemental to the Medicare that I am now on.

While some on this site may not be for universal health care, I am interested to know what other solutions they have.

In the last decade I’ve had insurance provided by my employer, paid it for myself when I was self employed and now have insurance through my husband. But the insurance through my husband is insurance we provided for all our employees as well as ourselves. I know this country is in an incredible crisis in terms of health care. I’ve been able to observe that from many angles. I have grown children who are in their early twenties… a time when insurance is near impossible to come by. All but one of them avoided college right after high school so they couldn’t get student insurance. And none of the jobs hiring young people with no skills or education provides health care. My sister is in her sixties and has had complications from treatment for breast cancer for years. She has no education and was a service worker all her life. I watched her work 14 hour days with no health care while battleing cancer and all the complications. For myself… last year I went back to work for DSHS after 7 years out of that kind of work. I was shocked at what had happened to middle income health care while I was gone. I paid three times as much for half the health care while making a salary that had only gone up 1% - 2% a year in the last ten years. But I don’t know the answer. I’m with Frannie on that the government would just screw it up.