One step away.... Ouch

For a while I have wanted to see what was in our attic.   I have been looking at the trap door in the ceiling sense we have moved in this house.  Well the other day I decided to take a look.   I pulled one of our kitchen chairs into the hall way and reached up and unlocked the trap door.   I cautiously pulled on the chain and the trap door came down.   It hand the steps neatly folded up, I unfolded then and slowly started up to see what was up there.  I got to the top and took a quick glance hoping that I didn't see a set of eyes staring back at me. I was in luck to not see anything and proceeded up to the top.   I am not really sure what I was expecting to find, there was some old furniture and empty boxes and this huge, cheesy looking painting with a plastic frame that would fill up a wall.  With my curiosity fulfilled I decided to head back down the stairs.   I was half way down and Brenna said watch out and it was too late.   There was a missing step and I found it.  The next thing I knew I was down at the bottom of the stairs tangles up in them.   It took me a while to figure out what happened.   I was so lucky to not break my leg, it was wedged in-between 2 steps pretty good.  I ended up with some bruises to my legs and a little to my ego as well.  

I tell you this story because it reminds me of how close we are to financial ruin with not having insurance.  With the loss of my job we lost our insurance.  We have a choice to paying the COBRA payments to keep it but it is $1675 a month.   Tina just started a job and it has insurance it you can call it that.   It will cost about $650 a month and it will have a co pay of $2500 per person and a $5000 co pay for the family before it will start to pay the 80/20 benefits.

    

Tina and I would say we are like most families out there.   But there is no way we can pay 12,000 out of pocket to have insurance L   I guess we are lucky that it isn’t next year or we would be having to decide to either pay the penalty for not taking insurance or paying half of Tina’s wages into insurance with the new health care act coming into play.

I really don’t think there is a easy solution to fixing the health care system here in the U.S.  but I hope that someday our government leaders will get it figured out.