Health Insurance: Looking Back -- And Ahead
Doreen Hodges, 42, Was Helped by DC Healthy Families
Each year, many of us make choices about our health insurance. See how life and their health plans affected some people this year and how that will reflect in 2008 selections. We'll check back with some of them in the coming year to see how their choices work out. Select an image to the left to read more. | |||||||||||
Two years ago, Doreen Hodges's husband, a courier, shattered his ankles on the job and hasn't been able to return to work. Disability insurance pays $32,500 a year, about half his salary. The family also has work-related health coverage through Cigna PPO but have found it hard to pay monthly premiums of $427, deductibles of up to $2,000 per person and hefty co-payments. The couple has a newborn who was born premature and a 7-year-old with Down syndrome and autism. Luckily for the Hodgeses, who live in Washington, they qualify for DC Healthy Families, a combination Medicaid and SCHIP program open to families with incomes up to twice the poverty level (and to children and pregnant women with income up to three times the poverty level). Cigna covers about $3,750 of the family's monthly $5,000 bill for health-care services; Healthy Families picks up the balance. "I don't know if we could afford the health insurance coverage" otherwise, Hodges said. The District and some states have extended SCHIP eligibility beyond the program's original scope to include more children, even parents in some situations. President Bush's recent veto of a reauthorized and expanded SCHIP program leaves it in limbo. "I worry," Hodges says, about what could happen to her if SCHIP is not reauthorized. Her grade: B for Cigna PPO, A for DC Healthy Families | |||||||||||
