Guaranteed Healthcare

I received a notice from the Houston County Board of Education (in GA) today offering the seasonal nasal FluMist vaccine to students and parents. How nice.

The costs for the vaccine are as follows:

Medicaid/PeachCare recipients: $0

State Health Benefit Plan (United Healthcare/Cigna) $0

No Insurance: $14.80 (and here's the punch line)

Other Health Insurance not listed: $25.00

Uh, so I would be better off not mentioning my health insurance? (Guess I'll keep that dirty little secret.) I added up our medical bills today...that we are slowly paying on...and slowly getting more and more behind on...so far we owe $24,007.07 in medical bills due to my husband being involved in a severe vehicle accident on 10/16/08.

We are now financially ruined for a long time. And we have health insurance. So, why are services more costly for folks who have insurance? We will not be vaccinated this year. Can't afford it. Because now, we are on a FIXED income. (oh, and in the healthcare status field i put employer insured;however, my husband was fired as soon as his FMLA time ran out so we only have health insurance for 18 months and then we will have none and we can hardly afford the COBRA insurance as it is.)