Uninsured American's

As I was watching the news this morning I happened to catch a clip about a free dental clinic being set up in Springfield. They said that it will be open today and tomorrow. What I found to be so sad about the whole story was that people had began to form a line for the free clinic yesterday. They said there seemed to already be a full house for today and if you should want to be seen tomorrow you should probably plan on getting there as soon as possible and waiting in line all night.

It is crazy to sit and think about the number of people in this nation that are without health and dental insurance because of the sheer cost of it. Myself, my husband and my children being among those lucky few. My husband is self employed and I am a full time student and we simply can't afford the $3,000 per month it would cost to insure us and only one of our children. I say only one of our other children because our youngest has got severe asthma and we can't get him insured for any amount of money. Since his condition is "pre-existing" no one will insure him. Never mind the fact that he's had it since he was a few months old. The really sad thing is that the $3000 per month it would cost to get insurance would be the absolute worst coverage they have to offer.

I thought I would see how much the numbers have changed over the last year and this is what I found from CNN.  Can you believe that over the years of 2007 and 2008 86.7 million people were without health insurance at one point or another. Part of the problem is that some smaller businesses are not financially stable enough to offer group health insurance and poverty is on the rise. According to http://money.cnn.com/2011/09/13/news/economy/census_bureau_health_insurance/index.htm  the percentage of people that had health insurance through their employers fell to 55.3% from 56.1% the year before.

Here lies my question.....at what point does it end? At what point do those of us that don't have "employer provided" insurance get a chance to have some that is actually affordable? We really had to weigh our options. My youngest son's asthma medicine is over $650 PER MONTH. What are we supposed to do? It's either spend the money every month or he doesn't breath. There is really no contest between the two,but you know what I'm saying. Not to mention the specialist appointments and such, BUT as expensive as all those things are it makes more sense to pay out of pocket than to pay $3000 per month for crappy insurance and still have to pay almost all of what we are paying now.

I was watching a special on 20/20 or maybe it was 60 Minutes, but anyway, they were talking about insurance companies and having the right to refuse children for "pre-existing" conditions such as asthma. It was amazing to me the number of people that are in the same boat we are. How can these companies do that to these children that really need them? What would I do if I just simply couldn't afford his medicine? I'll tell you what I would do....I would starve before I didn't give him what he needed and believe it or not there are a lot of parents out there doing just that....starving themselves so their children can have the medicine they need and that is completely horrific coming from a nation like ours!!!!!!