Matthew's Family Explains the Fragile Middle Class
I crunch numbers and take surveys and read fed reports until my eyes cross. But sometimes I lay it all aside in the recognition that someone who lives the middle class struggle can tell the story better than I can.
Terri King sent me this email, which I reproduce with her permission, word for word:
I just read an article written by Elizabeth Warren re: Medical Bankruptcies.. and it scared me to death.
I am the mother of a 15 month old baby boy born 2 months premature w/ a rare four fold heart defect. He spent 6 months of his life in the ICU's of a hospital here in Las Vegas and Stanford in California. He has had 2 open heart surgeries and will need more throughout his life. Due to the horrific costs of his medical care, 1.9 million had been paid out by our insurance company by the time he was 10 months old.
My husband is a police officer here in Las Vegas, and we thought he had great insurance... but it did have a 2 million dollar lifetime cap. We are being told that we are ineligible to purchase private insurance.... and we "make too much money" for help from the state?
So what is a middle class family to do??? We have this beautiful baby boy, that has suffered so. He has a host of other issues now ... lung disease and kidney reflux. He may also have dental and vision problems due to being premature, the 19 different drugs that he had been on for the half of his life and the oxygen he needed. We don't even know at this time about his developmental issues! He has six different specialists that we take him to.
We will never in a million years be able to afford this baby on a police officer pay. We may be forced to divorce so I can go on welfare, move out of state to another state that helps it's medically fragile children, give Matthew up to the state so he gets the care he needs, or we've been told to have Mike quit the job he loves as a Detective w/ the police department... to get another job w/ health insurance. None of these choices sound good to me! It seems that it pays to be poor in this case.
I am sick... We did everything right to prepare for our baby. We saved, I was planning to stay home and raise the baby myself... and we had health insurance!
We did not expect a baby w/ a heart defect and other health issues. No one but Donald Trump or Warren Buffet can afford these medical costs. You can read Matthew's story by clicking on his site below.
Terri & Michael King
Matthew's story on Congenital Heart Information Network From Las Vegas, NV
Do three things: 1) Click on Matthew's site and take a good look at this baby, 2) post some encouragement here for Matthew's family (they will be reading this post), and 3) tell us all what we're going to do to protect families like the Kings.
The needs are overwhelming, but if everyone did something for people in situations like this, imagine the difference it would make in everyone's lives.
Those who are fortunate enough to publicize their plights, can often find the resources to make it through, but there are many, many more people who have stories of how their lives have gotten out of control due to circumstances they were unable to prepare for. The oppressiveness of the lenders who prey on people in these situations is appalling. Mortgage lenders act as if providing a mortgage loan will help the problem, yet it only insures that eventually the borrower will end up homeless in addition to their medical problems, because there is no mercy. There is no loan forgiveness anymore, for the needy.
Jim Anderson
The Truth About Credit
August 15, 2006 9:29 AM | Reply | Permalink
The needs are overwhelming, but if everyone did something for people in situations like this, imagine the difference it would make in everyone's lives.
Those who are fortunate enough to publicize their plights, can often find the resources to make it through, but there are many, many more people who have stories of how their lives have gotten out of control due to circumstances they were unable to prepare for.
The oppressiveness of the lenders who prey on people in these situations is appalling. Mortgage lenders act as if providing a mortgage loan will help the problem, yet it only insures that eventually the borrower will end up homeless in addition to their medical problems, because there is no mercy. There is no loan forgiveness anymore, for the needy.
But when we ask the question, "What shoud we do?" one obvious answer is to donate to help out. We should do that as we are able. However, we should take it a step further. Mortgage lenders prey on people in these situations, under the guise of helping them. Yet, they only make sure that eventually the family ends up homeless. This is because there is no mercy; there is no loan forgiveness for those in these situations. These "helpful" financial institutions set themselves up to be the ones to enforce further trials on these families as they offer to refinance their medical and credit card debts. Giving money just to make these mortgage loan payments makes the problem worse. Giving money to negotiate settlements of debts would be better, and help could be spread further. So government needs to step in here and require loan forgiveness, or at least allow settlements, on mortgages without the sacrifice of one's home for people in these situations.
Jim Anderson
The Truth About Credit
August 15, 2006 9:30 AM | Reply | Permalink
Every time I see a story like this my heart goes out to the people involved. They find themselves in an impossible situation with very poor chances for a good long term resolution.
My question is as a species, can we survive if we allocate scarce resources in this way? In the natural world we know what the outcome would be. Every time I see how we act in these situations I wonder if we are placing the species in peril. Certainly there are no good answers and we can’t know if we are pursuing a course that is good or bad for us. Are we ignoring the realities of the natural world which we are part of or can we actually overcome the well understood laws that govern that world? Science has allowed us to do things that continuously expand what is possible.
We know beyond doubt that there is a serious inequity in the global distribution of all resources. In that sense maybe this is already resolving itself just as the natural world states. And no matter what we do we actually can’t ever alter that larger scheme; At least not without evolving way beyond where we are now.
Interestingly enough, Elizabeth, you continually identify the growing inequality with a focus upon the economic sector. Due to dollar resources being at the top level of any logical (as presently devised) resource hierarchy, the inequalities you identify have to be reflected throughout. Does this unequivocally state that we are moving globally to a greater disparity of resource distribution? And are we seeing that manifest itself in places like Darfur? How is this related to the idea that in the U.S. we spend more for health care than in most all other economic units across the globe?
I always have more questions than answers.
thepeoplechoose
August 18, 2006 2:50 AM | Reply | Permalink