SCHIP correspondence [David Freddoso]
One correspondent notes that buying one's own health insurance comes with a price:
I'm afraid you're losing some credibility with your comfort that a family of four making $51k/year ought to be able to afford health insurance. True, they can, but only if they live a far more frugal life than their parents did. That's the problem; the middle class is getting poorer when you compare their buying power to that of their parents.
A woman writes:
A 50K annual income is not too bad for a single person. Somewhat doable for a single parent and school-age kid (like me). But I could not imagine the constant struggle to make ends meet if I had 2 extra bodies in my house and was only making $50,000 a year. AND had to stress about health insurance. The real world doesn;t work so easily as sometimes heartless/clueless people believe it does.
Well ouch! One gentleman in the Commonwealth is less fatalistic:
I live in VA, and, if I didn't have coverage through my employer, for $219 a month my family of 4 could have good coverage under Blue Cross. That's the equivalent of a pretty cheap car payment, but it covers the whole family in case of a serious medical problem — this is important stuff, people! You have to be willing to pay for it! This is high ($4,500) deductible insurance, not a plan that pays for every doctor's visit. But that's the point. That's what people need, insurance against catastrophe, not a plan that pays for everything, which incentivizes waste.
Play with the figures at this link and you'll see what I mean:
Another:
This Kaiser survey of health insurance says that the average worker contribution to health insurance premiums is about $2700 a year for family coverage (or $226 a month).
The idea that a family making $51,000 can't afford to buy that coverage....They probably spend more than $226 a month on their phone and internet service...
The system needs fixing, we can all agree on that. But a few middle-class folks have figured out how to make it work for them without enrolling their kids in SCHIP.
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