Soaring Health-Care Costs Forced This Family to Choose Who Can Stay Insured
David and Maribel Maldonado seem the very definition of making it in America. David arrived in the U.S. from Mexico as a small child. His father supported the family by working long hours as a mechanic while his mother raised their 10 children. By the time David had a family of his own, his career as a salesman was flourishing. His wife Maribel, whose family is also from Mexico, worked as a hairstylist while caring for the couple’s two children. David’s annual salary reached about $113,000 by the time the children were in their teens. It was more than enough to live in a pretty suburban house outside Dallas, take family vacations, go to restaurants and splurge at the nearby mall. And to afford health insurance.
Then, in 2012, Maribel discovered she had breast cancer. “Your world comes crumbling down,” David says.
Maribel had a double mastectomy, paid for by the insurance David obtained through his job, a small welding business with fewer than a dozen employees.
But two years into Maribel’s recovery and treatment, David’s boss gathered his staff into his office. Don’t worry, he said, business is good. Your jobs are safe. But there would be one change: Health insurance offered through the company would soon be discontinued. It had simply become too expensive for the small company to provide it.
For David, the responsible head of a thriving middle-class family, having health insurance was non-negotiable. But the coverage he found to replace the company plan cost $1,375-a-month, up from the $260 a month he had been paying. Suddenly, the family’s health insurance tab “was more than what we were paying for our mortgage,” David says
Read about Meridian Springs Primary Care – http://www.digitaljournal.com/pr/4030396