BellaOnline Forums Relationships Married No Kids health ins. premiums for the married/CHILDFREE

My husband is a Federal Employee and it is currently open season. As I was wading through all the latest and greatest in benefits, I noticed we are now able to select coverage from THREE options: self; SELF PLUS ONE, and Family. And what to my wondering eyes would appear?...was an increase for the Family selection column, in the next fiscal year! HoHoHo, Meeeeeerry Christmas! It's about time.

Finally, a small yet very significant victory for the CHILDFREE community. Married no kids couples have been paying over-inflated insurance premiums for years. Now it's time for the couples who choose to have children to pay for the proper amount of insurance they actually require. And we pay for what WE require, nothing more, nothing less.

Good things come to those who wait <img src="/images/graemlins/smirk.gif" alt="" />

Fire

"I did not have sex with that woman, Monica Lewinsky"
President Clinton, 1998

Finally! We already subsidize other people's kids with school taxes (which I think is a waste, because it all seems to go to sports stadiums), so why should we have to subsidize their insurance? Maybe if people had to really bear more of the cost of having children (school expenses, health insurance) maybe it make people stop and think, can I really afford this? But it seems to be an extension of our spendhappy society ... spend today with credit, pay tomorrow.

We've been lucky -- for whatever reason, we have always had this available to us. What has irked me, though, was the guy in my office with 5 kids b*tching about his premiums when (a) DH and I pay more than twice what he does for insurance through DH's company (it's also much better insurance, but we were talking strictly $$) and (b) I know he's paying the same as the guy in our office with 1 kid. The insurance here (my company) is pretty lousy - they opted for higher deductibles and fewer coverage options rather than increasing employee premiums (pretty stupid IMHO). <img src="/images/graemlins/rolleyes.gif" alt="" />
Which is why I'm on DH's insurance.

well, for a long time now, we've been using the insurance provided by my dh's company. we've never really added up exactly how much it is though because it's been great insurance (except it paid ZERO for infertility treatments, and we ended up spending a lot of money, but that was our choice, so i'll stop griping).

now that dh has quit his job, we're insurance shopping. i went ahead and enrolled in my work's insurance for me because to cover just me, it's less than a hundred bucks a month. however, to add him, it's over five hundred a month! if it were me plus a child, it would be four hundred. if it were me, dh, and child(ren), it would be six hundred. crazy!

for jeff to buy individual insurance on his own is about the same as me getting on my employer's insurance. so that's what we're going to do. it's easier that way and cheaper.

here's the ironic thing though. now that we've had to stop trying to have a kid, and now that our last RE said we probably wouldn't have success even with more treatments, my new insurance covers 80% of infertility procedures except for IVF (i don't think anyone covers that). but the IUIs and daily ultrasounds and stuff would have been covered when we were doing that and were still hopeful. what a kick in the pants. oh, well.

now if i can just find an insurance plan that will pay for more laser hair removal. that would be ideal. <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

On principle I love this idea.. then people without children (including seniors) would not have to subsidize the substantial costs of schooling and healthcare for kids.
Unfortunately, in reality poor people will not stop having children that they could not afford and these children would wind up poor AND uneducated and hanging out on the streets because they had nothing better to do.
If only there were some way to ensure that people only had children that they WANTED and could AFFORD!

Wouldn't the world be a very different place if there was a system by which people had to apply to HAVE kids, and were heavily fined if they were caught having them "illegally."

Wow Tbunny. The world would definitely by a VERY different place if that was the case. And if there were courses and parenting fitness tests, and economic fitness tests that had to be passed also. You could then get a license for one pregnancy. Licenses for additional pregnancies would also include reviews of the parents' ability to raise more than one child.
Not that this will ever happen except in Science Fiction novels...
There really are too many children living in poverty, unfit parents and unwanted children in the world today (just watch the news if you need examples).

actually this system is in place already. when you adopt a child, you have to be inspected completely, they come to your home to make sure it's okay. they interview family and friends. they look into your credit records and bank accounts to make sure you didn't borrow more than 30% of the adoption fees. they do health checks. the whole nine yards.

so for the people who do want kids but are unable to have them, they have these "tests" in place. don't understand why they would do target one group and not another. a little unfair if you ask me. but that's just my opinion.

we were told by one of our fertility specialists that he thought we had marital issues and then he refused to treat us. the problem was we were both nervous in his office, and when i'm nervous, i have trouble talking to strangers. we'd already been to several other specialists who couldn't help us, and we were very tense and anxious. he sat with us for less than 2 minutes in his office, said, "i think you have a lot of issues to work out between yourselves, so i'm not going to treat you." we just left. i guess he's allowed to decide who can and who can't have children either. we did see another dr later who was much more understanding (he was dealing with infertility also) and helped us figure out what we wanted to do.

so there is a system in place to make sure people are fit parents. but i think it needs to look at everyone. kwim? i know they have these adoption standards for a reason, but still, why put someone who's already emotionally vulnerable through more stress? kwim?

okay, enough raging.

Good point, holles. I remember my cousin and her husband being frustrated to the point of many tears during the process of adopting their son. And then the agency misfiled some of the paperwork, so that her home inspection, interviews, health exams, etc. had to be re-done after they had already supposedly been approved! It was very stressful. I know she was saying the same thing - any idiot can pop out a kid and no one bats an eye over their "fitness" to parent, yet someone who really wants to be a parent is put through the mill.

It does suck how hard it is to adopt and then anyone can have a kid. Its very difficult to have anyother option though I think. The adoption agencies need to have rigorous standards, especially considering how many challenging kids are in the system. Lots of my students, who are severely disabled are adopted, some of their adopted parents did not know the extent of the disabilities when they adopted. This happened because the kids were infants and its hard to tell the extent of delays in infancy. I saw a video on pregnancy in china last night and it scared me. I understand totally the need for the limited population growth, but I would never want to live in such a controlling society. They have a lottery system determing which couples can try when, that has to be hard on couples with fertility issues. Its also not just pregnancy they control so much else about marriage work, etc. Its hard becuase there is such a fine line between supervision and controll in society, you want a supervised society but you dont want a controlling one. Its also so hard to decide what makes a good parent: I think people would have widely varying opinions. I agree though that infertilty is horribly unfair, it sucks how people who want kids often cant have them even though they would be great parents, and the bad parents cant seem to stop pumping them out.