{"id":632,"date":"2009-04-21T10:44:00","date_gmt":"2009-04-21T14:44:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/?p=632"},"modified":"2009-04-21T10:44:00","modified_gmt":"2009-04-21T14:44:00","slug":"with-son-in-remission-a-family-struggles-to-find-coverage-nytimes-com","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/?p=632","title":{"rendered":"With Son in Remission, a Family Struggles to Find Coverage – NYTimes.com"},"content":{"rendered":"

With Son in Remission, a Family Struggles to Find Coverage – NYTimes.com<\/a>:<\/p>\n

“Now the Walkers face the possibility that Jake will no longer be seen at Houston\u2019s renowned M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, which they credit for his remission.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou realize how vulnerable you really are,\u201d said Ms. Walker, who exhibits the maternal ferocity of a black bear. \u201cYou just \u2014 not give up \u2014 but you just feel that you\u2019re at a loss, that you\u2019re at your wits\u2019 end. I ask myself, \u2018Do I really have to lose my home to save my son\u2019s life?\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n

Neither of the Walkers has been able to land a job with the kind of large group coverage that would disregard Jake\u2019s health status. His cancer history effectively makes him uninsurable on the individual market. He is too old to qualify for Medicaid as a child, and it is virtually impossible in Texas to qualify as an able-bodied adult.<\/p>\n

Because the Walkers own their modest house, they have been told they do not merit other government assistance. With little predictable income beyond Ms. Walker\u2019s $688 unemployment check every two weeks, the family cannot afford the state\u2019s high-risk insurance pool or continuation coverage through the federal Cobra law.<\/p>\n

To date, Jake\u2019s treatment has cost nearly $2 million. Almost all of it has been paid by Cigna under a preferred-provider family policy that Ms. Walker paid $426.28 a month for through DHL, the troubled shipping company where she worked as a billing agent.<\/p>\n

Until last fall, Mr. Walker was the co-owner of a business that supplied DHL with trucks and drivers, but it too fell victim to downsizing. The feed store, the last in an area where suburbs are swallowing ranchland, has been losing money.<\/p>\n

What has made the Walkers feel most helpless, though, is that their son has been left so exposed, after all he has endured.<\/p>\n

\u201cYour job as a parent is to protect your children at any cost,\u201d Ms. Walker said. \u201cI really felt like I had let him down.\u201d”<\/p>\n

At the beginning of the article, Mrs. Walker’s salary was noted to be $37,000. She paid, out of that, $426 a month for her health insurance (admittedly, pretty darn good insurance given the expense of Jake’s treatment). $426 x 12 = $5112 per year bringing her salary down almost 14%, not counting the subsidy on the employer side, probably close to another $5K. <\/em>
<\/em>
The economic costs are brutal enough, but the fear, uncertainty, and skimping on care (prescriptions, skipping office visits, etc.) are just not acceptable in the richest country in the world.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With Son in Remission, a Family Struggles to Find Coverage – NYTimes.com: “Now the Walkers face the possibility that Jake will no longer be seen at Houston\u2019s renowned M.D. Anderson … Continue reading “With Son in Remission, a Family Struggles to Find Coverage – NYTimes.com”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[32,23,27,33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-632","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anecdote-off","category-access-to-treatment","category-health-insurance-cost","category-rationing-health-care"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/632","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=632"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/632\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}