If your like every other American during this time of year there are two topics that art at the top of the heap and that is either Taxes or securing health insurance for the next year. Now a days you need one to have the other. With the new laws in existence since the Affordable Care Act of 2014 and in certain states health insurance now a requirement or a potential fine with your personal income taxes; more people scramble with an sense of uncertainty and anxiety.

Now I don’t want to be a promoter for one side of the coin or the other when it comes to how health insurance should be subsidized or what health care plans should be on the ticket. I would have to reveal the guise of big pharma and lobbyist of the major health insurance agencies along with the political policy makers trying to make a name for themselves by taking a side. However, that is not me and that is not what I am writting this post about.
This forum is generally used to be a source of information for the open source network of the blogosphere and I can go on and on about how to secure health insurance the differences between plans and how you could be eligible for discounts and benefits through different plans. Nevertheless, that is for a different post.
Today I am going to vent a little about the limitations of health insurance available in the market place. As a parent I wrestle with the idea of what health insurance is best for our family. Like any other family we struggle with the idea of adding our kiddo’s to our employer sponsored health plan or look for something on the Health insurance market. Our concerns go a little deeper than that and my worries are more complicated than most, as a special needs family. A paid health insurance plan with out of pocket expenses for doctor visits, medications and medical equipment or hospitalizations is unfathomable for families with special needs children. There are a few resources available to help families get started like the United Cerebral Palsy’s Special needs equipment loan program or toy library; which can help with trial periods of equipment before families make these expensive purchases. The cost of raising children is difficult enough with the costs of living going up at the pump and in the grocery store for all families. Having to incorporate the costs of purchasing health insurance and paying monthly premiums is one thing. Even more concerning is the cost of paying medication co-pays and for doctor visits. When you factor in durable medical equipment like most special needs families have for occupational therapy and physical therapy ei.- wheelchairs, standers, special feeding chairs, special activity equipment, abillity toys, eye gaze technology aids and as the list goes on so do the co-pays involved for all of these special needs.
Most families circum to the defeat of caring for their loved one and are unable to maintain employment, unable to work regular 9-5 jobs and a lot of the times have to remain in the shadows of poverty and disfunctionality, because of the hardships of caring for a loved one.
Our economic system likes to say it is empathetic to the needs of families and there is FMLA, paid parental leave and other programs in place to help families, but like any other business maneuver ; there are always work-a-rounds and employers usually try and find the easy way out of the dilema of an employee that has family matters that intervene with the employees availability. Not all employers are understanding of employees with a special needs family.
So that leaves families having to not only bounce between the limbo of not qualifying for Government assistance and missing out on employer sponsored health plan benefits and having to navigate the Free health care system because those out of pocket costs either are to costly to get the services needed for there loved one causing more visits to the hospital and more work hours lost to the abyss of long hospital stays. There are even housing projects for families that find themselves loosing their housing because of their inability to work like the Ronald Mcdonald house.

It is maddening to think that as a country we still struggle with the issue of Health care for all!
It is dis-heartning having to stay with-in a certain income bracket to provide the best care you can for your loved one. Some families already struggle with the fact of having to miss out on the normalcy of everyday activities that unfortunately they can not do because the wheelchair does not go to the beach for example. Or, having the anxiety of needing to be very careful because a respiratory illness could be disastrous.
It was an advancement of our society when it was decided that a way for making health insurance affordable was needed. Now, is the time to take a second and third look at the why’s and the who’s of those in need of specialty services and look past making it just affordable for most, but making it accessible and financially sound for those families that are mediocrally financially stable until that 30k hospital stay happens and now they are inundated in the debt of it all.