Break Homework

Our families experience with health care is currently a good one. But a few years back we had some problems. In the beginning, my mother and father had 2 separate health insurance policies because of both of their jobs, but my mother had several miscarriages and therefore some problems. Eventually she got pregnant with me and had to stop working in order to take care of herself and insure the safety of her baby. This caused a problem because she then lost her health insurance coverage from her job and the only had 1 health insurance plan. My father's health care plan was a union health care fund which at the time meant they could go through the union's clinics which were extremely far or they could pay at a doctor of their choice out of pocket and then submit for reimbursement. It would then be reviewed and the union would say how much they thought the visit was worth. This was a disadvantage because the union's fee scales seemed to be outdated and current fees were very much above what they were offering. They only offered a certain percentage of what the visit was actually worth. The doctors discovered my mother was high risk and said that she needed more care then what she was being offered. It was estimated that her pregnancy and birthing process would cost her $6,000 - $8,000 when the union was only willing to pay $1,200 - $1,900. They got lucky and found that there was a clinic in New York hospital that would accept whatever the union paid them and would give them the best possible treatment as long as they were willing to see a different doctor at each visit. Because they had miscarriages, my mother was considered a high risk case and therefor had to have many specialist work with her to find what was wrong. They paid for nearly everything however it still costs them $6,500 or more and by the time I was born the union coverage was a little better so I was able to see a pediatrician. The only problem was that my parents had to pay for vaccines because the union didn't cover well child care. This meant my parents had to pay for the vaccines out of pocket.

When I was 2 years old my mom was pregnant again and the insurance was a lot better and they only had to pay 20% of the obstetric care. Because she was still high risk, however, it still cost them around $2,000. The good thing was they only had to pay $20 every time they saw a doctor in addition to the $2,000. By now the union started to pay well child care, but they still had to pay 20% of doctor visits. This was better than what they ever had. They dropped the 20% charge when I was about 5, but through this time, my doctor told my family not to worry about payments, because she needed to see us and we needed our vaccines. We had had to stop coming for a while because we couldn't afford the vaccines until our doctor told us she would handle it. A few years later, health care was a lot better and my mother got pregnant again. This time she was under blue cross blue shield and still high risk, but it only cost them $15 a visit and there was no charge for specialists or tests. So they had my sister and by then well child care costs them nothing and sick visits were $10. This was 10 years ago. Presently now that the rates have gone up, we have to pay $15 co-pay as long as we went to a doctor through blue cross blue shield and there is no fee for well child care. Now my mother sees a hematologist and they are very happy to have health insurance because each visit is approximately $3,200 a visit. The insurance negotiates with the doctor's office and they pay approximately $900 - $1,000 a visit and she only has to pay $15 co-pay.

This is different if we compare it to the movie "Sicko" by:Michael Moore. In this movie, Michael Moore talks about people in America who have health care and yet still have problems with their physical illnesses. He talks about how people have problems such as the 9/11 workers who now have lung problems and nightmares. These people have health care, but they are having difficulty paying for the doctors and the treatment they need. There was a women who had a husband who was a fire fighter and he had a serious illness that even though they had health care was hard to treat because the health care company wouldn't okay the necessary treatment. In our case, there really wasn't any problem we were just dealing with the changing times of health care and we got really lucky and had a good health care program.