A human point of view

I came across this incredibly powerful post (via FMH) from Chandelle about the reality of living on welfare with no health insurance. I found her point of view unique because she cannot be summed up by a blanket stereotype of the "resident welfare queen" (her words, not mine.) Below is an excerpt but I encourage you to go read the whole post (it's not very long.)

Six months ago, it seemed really likely that our son had broken his leg. he fell off the play structure at school and didn't walk for three weeks. then he seemed to get better, and then he got worse. we didn't take him to a doctor. this wasn't a period when we had a tax refund laying around, which is the only time we ever have a surplus of cash. this was a period when we couldn't even say that we were living "paycheck to paycheck" because our paychecks didn't cover our needs; every month, we ran out of food, were threatened with eviction and sometimes had our utilities turned off. given a complete absence of up-front cash or credit cards, our only option was the ER. but i was well aware of what an ER visit, plus an x-ray, plus a bone scan, would have cost. it would have crippled us. we wouldn't have been able to touch such a fee for years, and in the meantime we probably would have been sued, had our wages garnished and lost our home. (we've been through this before; this wasn't just speculation.) so, we didn't take him to the doctor. does this compute? are you hearing this? our son may have broken a limb and we didn't take him to the doctor because it would have utterly crushed us financially. do you have any idea how disgusting it is to have to weigh such an issue in your mind? nothing should take priority over a child's health and yet, in this country, it's considered acceptable that we would have been evicted from our home by choosing to take our child's health as a higher priority.