Guaranteed Healthcare

I was a 40 yr old stay-at-home mom with a 16 and 10 yr. old when my husband died. The day he died I found out our Employer Insured policy ended. I was offered a COBRA policy, which was unaffordable to me as it was the same cost as my monthly mortgage payment.

Eventually I obtained a private policy for myself and my 2 children which was much less coverage than the Blue Cross policy we had with my husband's employer, but was all I could afford. Then, every 6 months the premium would jump drastically and I was forced to repeatedly downgrade our coverage to the point that within 2 years all we had was a policy with a $3,000 deductible which only covered us for hospital care.

Eventually, I remarried. My husband's employer provided healthcare for our family, with a Blue Cross policy. I cried when I held that card in my hand thinking that those years of worries and not going to the doctor unless it was an emergency were over. While covered I went for a "yearly" exam (which I had put off during the bad coverage years) and found our that I had a genetic condition. It was more a label than anything, because I am quite healthy and the doctor informed me that his could very likely not cause me any problems, which, as of this writing, it has not.

Meanwhile, however, my husband lost his job. My husband was only able to find work that did not provide insurance for our family. We were able, with great difficulty, to pay COBRA to keep the insurance we had. My husband worked one full time job and one part time job (neither offering health insurance) in order to pay the premium on top of our other bills. Eventually the COBRA ran out and we were forced to look for a private plan. Due to my diagnosis, I was refused coverage by every insurance company we applied to... and because we used an agent we applied to many.

We purchased a policy to cover my husband and my children (I have since had another child who was 4 at the time this was occurring) but had to look to SChip for me. However, the cost of SChip was $600. 00 per month, which on top of the $500 premium we were already paying for the rest of the family... it was impossible for us to manage. So for all practical purposes, at 50 years old, this "stay at home" mom, who did what all the "Family Values" folks say is best, is virtually uninsured.