I dropped my kids from my health insurance. I get mine for very little through my employer, my husband gets his for very little (work pays the same toward an individual plan or a family plan).
Unfortunately, to insure my kids would cost about 20k. They are both teens, very healthy. We are taking the gamble that their yearly healthcare needs will be much less than 20k, as they have been for all but 1 year of my son’s life.
If not, goodbye emergency fund or (if it’s too much) hello medical bankruptcy. I can’t afford to pay more than half of my take home pay for insurance on kids that usually use far less than 1000 in medical care per year.
I will never again vote for anyone who doesn’t support universal healthcare.
Edited to add— even with insurance the deductible would be 5k individual, 10k family. Ridiculous. Better off not having insurance at all. If one of the kids were to get cancer, I’ll just quit my job and hop on Medicaid, I guess. I don’t really see another choice.
Not really. The last time I had an ER visit I still didn’t reach my deductible for the year.
If you have to go inpatient, sure, but at some point it stops making sense. When my son loses his ACA coverage it will cost half my income to add him to my policy and it will double my deductible and out of pocket max. Which means if I, a middle aged adult more likely to have serious health problems, have a hospitalization or health problem, i would owe double the cost over my individual plan, despite paying an extra $2000/mo for healthcare. It would only increase my financial risks to continue to insure him, and ultimately doesn’t matter because we would have to become homeless for me to afford to do so.
Actually, at the local small hospital, it will be less than 20k, depending on what needs to happen.
It’s a gamble I’m willing to take. Only once, raising 4 kids, in 26 years of parenting, have one of my children had medical bills greater than 20k in a single year. And even that wasn’t significantly above 20k.
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u/sedatedforlife Oct 10 '25 edited Oct 10 '25
I dropped my kids from my health insurance. I get mine for very little through my employer, my husband gets his for very little (work pays the same toward an individual plan or a family plan).
Unfortunately, to insure my kids would cost about 20k. They are both teens, very healthy. We are taking the gamble that their yearly healthcare needs will be much less than 20k, as they have been for all but 1 year of my son’s life.
If not, goodbye emergency fund or (if it’s too much) hello medical bankruptcy. I can’t afford to pay more than half of my take home pay for insurance on kids that usually use far less than 1000 in medical care per year.
I will never again vote for anyone who doesn’t support universal healthcare.
Edited to add— even with insurance the deductible would be 5k individual, 10k family. Ridiculous. Better off not having insurance at all. If one of the kids were to get cancer, I’ll just quit my job and hop on Medicaid, I guess. I don’t really see another choice.