I’m passing along a prayer request for my readers who pray. A woman on my parenting forum posted about her parents’ issues with their health insurance problems. Due to the insurance company’s greed, their new insurance premium will be $2,100 per month and they will have $1,500 per person and $3,000 per couple deductibles, and $60 copay on every prescription, and $50 copay on every office visit, and the insurance company will only cover 60/40 above the deductibles.
Essentially, no coveraage at all, for more than $25,000 a year just for the premiums. Both parents have serious health issues. They are taking medication that literally keeps them alive, and now they can’t afford it.
This kind of nonsense is legal. And I believe it’s a judgment against our nation that we are going to have to answer to before God Almighty, that we’ve effectively “sold the needy for a pair of sandals.”
The family has looked into Medicaid and all sorts of programs for the aging that are supposed to help in exactly this sort of situation, and they qualify for nothing.
Please pray for this family to find a solution. I can’t imagine how devastating this must be for all concerned.
This may be a dumb question, but have they contacted a company like Blue Cross and found out if they are part of any organization that might have group rates? You know, like SFWA does.
At that rate, they’d be better off self-paying. Doctors and hospitals pass along savings to self-pays that would normally go to the insurance company. But I admit it is a scarier route and not always viable.
They should also be in contact with the drug companies because they often have programs to help those who can’t afford their medications.
Definitely passing this prayer request along (to Heaven myself and to others to pray). Is there a patron saint/guardian angel of healthcare?
Ivy, they’ve looked into that, and they can’t.
Jenni, they have no choice in the matter: they simply can’t afford the jacked-up rates for the low-benefit “insurance.” Scary or not, they’re going to have to do it. I believe they’ve been contacting the drug companies.
The patron saint of healthcare? Saint Raphael the Archangel. 😉 Ask me how I know that.
re: Raphael. Yep, and the patron saint of people who are finding it hard to get a husband or wife, I guess. (To whoever hasn’t read Tobit’s book: Raphael comes to Earth, disguised, and helps a boy get a cure for his father’s blindness and gets the boy married with a poor girl who had all her previous six or seven husbands killed before the wedding night and was considering killing herself. Auxiliary patron saint of desperate people, I guess?)
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