One Uninsured Families' Story - Ours

By John Powell
June 2005

Our family wasn't always uninsured. We do a little soul bearing here to show what might cause a guy to go to all this trouble and how charity Health Care made us Beware.

Ann and I got married in 1969 and started a main stream life normal to college grads. We had insurance through my employer and by the end of three years we had been blessed with a boy and a girl. Now think Ike and Tina Turner or CCR and the tune "Proud Mary". You know the part about "left a good job in the city working for the man" and then "rollin, rollin, rollin on the river." I left the high land for the bayou and became a fisherman for thirty years.

Now becoming a fisherman isn't a career move it's a lifestyle change. In 1980 we had our last girl blessing and we were still insured with Blue Cross. Our monthly insurance bill went from $277 to $357 that year and we had no illness.

In 1985 Blue Cross jumped from $391 to $491 per month and all this time the price of fish stayed the same. We were doing our bit to keep inflation in check. From 1987 till 1992 we tried a high deductible policy with Travelers to keep from being without. From 1993 to 1999 we were back with Blue Cross and dropping coverage again just to stay covered.

I felt like the insurance companies were giving us the squeeze play. We were experiencing the same problem as our older kin and friends. As people get older and need insurance more, the rates are increased till they shake you off like a dog coming out of the rain.

In mid 1999 we dumped conventional insurance and went with a Christian sharing plan. The monthly cost was low and we felt like the concept of sharing our burdens with believers was a noble plan. We never filed any claims and gave it up after two years when the organization went into receivership. It seems the organizer was buying all his family RV's and he had a belly dancer on his staff.

So for the last five years we have been without insurance. Like lots of the self employed it became impossible for us to afford it. Ann was diagnosed with 3rd stage Hodgkin's Lymphoma in the Summer of 2002, and she is looking at open heart surgery this month. As they say, "when it rains it pores." The Cancer is gone and if her heart valve is repaired she might be hard to keep up with.

We started out 35 short years ago being self reliant, hard working, and insurance buying healthy young folks. Now we are bums sucking the life blood out of the health care system with free care, and it's hello Charity Hospital New Orleans here we come. We are doing the best we can with the cards we are dealt and with the grace of God we will make it.

In this final paragraph I would like to give praise to all those who work at University Medical Center in Lafayette and the Medical Center of LA at New Orleans (aka Charity Hospital). These people are giving it their best with the limited resources they are given. The state health care budget is very tight. They are kind, courteous, and vastly overloaded.