When Health Insurance Is Not a Safeguard

[MountainLaurel]

Part of a series on the miasma that is health care in the United States.

Until the fourth trip to the hospital in 1998, Zachery Dorsett's parents thought their son was an average child who was having trouble getting over a passing illness. He was 7 months old, and it was his second case of pneumonia.

The Dorsetts, Sharon and Arnold, were concerned about Zachery's health, but they were not worried about the financial consequences. They were a young, middle-income couple, with health insurance that covered 90 percent of doctors' bills and most of the costs of prescription drugs.

Then the bills started coming in. After a week in the hospital, the couple's share came to $1,100 - not catastrophic, but more than their small savings. They enrolled in a 90-day payment plan with the hospital and struggled to make the monthly installments of nearly $400, hoping that they did not hit any other expenses.

But Zachery, who was eventually found to have an immune system disorder, kept getting sick, and the expense of his treatment - fees for tests, hospitalizations, medicine - kept mounting, eventually costing the family $12,000 to $20,000 a year. Earlier this year, the Dorsetts stopped making mortgage payments on their ranch house, in a subdivision outside Indianapolis, because they could not afford them. In March, they filed for bankruptcy.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/23/national/23PATIENT.html

[bballny]

1. Off to debtor's prison

for them. How dare they miss a payment. This is the responsibility society.

[MountainLaurel]

2. 90 hours a week

That man is working, and yet he still has to choose between keeping his son alive and keeping their house. And we're supposed to be a "Christian nation."

:cry: