Embrace the Camera: 11/8/2012

I wrote this post Tuesday so I don't know the outcome of the election. I did my part. I voted.

This election hit home for me this year. There were a lot of important choices to be made. From healthcare, to equal pay, to education, to educational woes like loans...just to name a few. Having kiddos changes your views...on pretty much everything. So I'm not giving away who I voted for.

However....

I feel I voted for the person who could relate to being in over your head with student loans. 

I feel I voted for the person who would want my girls to make just as much money as someone elses sons are for doing the same job. Let's face it, Kayleigh is a pretty smart cookie and deserves just as much money in her paycheck and also in her pension. Yeah that was a joke, she probably will never know what a pension is. 

I feel I voted for someone who could relate to a hard working family just trying to "live the dream" and hoping that their need for medical care doesn't cause them to move into their parents basement. That almost happened to us when Dan lost his medical clearance and couldn't control. This is how it went:

If you were like me and had an awesome job with amazing healthcare, then you probably have no reason to think this is even a problem. Right? Wrong. When I was pregnant with my first child, my husband moved to Cleveland to be an Air Traffic Controller. I stayed back in Buffalo because I was seven months pregnant and didn't want to change doctors, insurance and I liked getting paid. My insurance was pretty awesome so my husband picked some rinky dink plan from his job since we had awesome Synacor insurance. It was basically a high deductible plan but who cared because everything was covered by my job. Then I quit my job to move to Cleveland with my husband and we lost the awesome insurance but that was ok because neither of us really ever got sick and the doctors office was great about slashing our bill from $300 a visit to $80 for Kayleighs well visits. She went practically every month at first so yeah, it sucked, but when January rolled around we would just get better insurance. Good Plan. The God laughed.

July. The month my husband was pulled off the floor in training to be an ATC because of an "eye problem." You can't control without corrected 20/20 and right now my husband didn't have it. To get his job back he needed that problem fixed, and fast. Lets start at the optometrist, or rather the several that he went to see who ran every test they could think of and x-rayed Dan multiple times. They referred him to a neurosurgeon in fear of a brain tumor behind his optic nerve. Multiple tests and x-rays led to No tumor. Next diagnosis: Multiple Sclerosis. WHAT? That led to several more specialists in the Cleveland Clinic along with MRI's, and a lumbar puncture also known as a spinal tap. NO MS. NO conclusion. I'm sure you are reading this and I am sure you are thinking THANK GOD. Dan is the healthiest man around there is nothing wrong just a crappy eye. We were so happy he didn't have all those horrible things the doctors were telling us he had.

Then they came. The bills. Mountains of bills one after another. All of which were either not covered by insurance or we didn't reach the deductible yet so we had to pay out of pocket. I swear the deductible was higher than the cost of an average house. The bills came to around fifteen thousand dollars. My husband is the healthiest man, but we are now going to die of starvation or exposure from living in a box. I called and no worries, they have a payment plan. It was about nine hundred dollars a month. That's reasonable right? After weeks of worrying and trying to figure out what the **** we were going to do, I learned about the Cleveland Clinic Foundation. We were eligible because Dan wasn't making a ton of money since he was still training. So we got lucky and our bills were covered. EVERYTHING was covered. Some people aren't that lucky and I also don't know if we will ever be in that position again seeing as insurance companies are slashing benefits daily. So this is pretty high on the list. Healthcare HAS to be reformed. I feel I voted for someone who knows this and hopes to remedy some of these issues plaguing Americans. After all, both the incumbent and nominee have the same exact healthcare plan right? Why is this even an argument?

I feel I made the right decision and hope I can look back twenty years from now and think, my kids have that opportunity because I helped make sure it happened. 

I am so proud of these girls already. Although, Riley could let me get a little more sleep. I wouldn't look like a tired zombie with a few more hours. Oh well.