Health Insurance Can Come In Handy

I remember back when I was a kid and why to this day how I have grown to realize how important health insurance is to a growing family. Here is how it all went down on what was to be a great skiing vacation.

Every year we would take a family vacation. The night before the trip we were packing and looking forward for my dad to get home from work. My dad worked long hard hours at the local industrial plant just outside of town. He worked there for as long as I could remember. Mom was a part time cashier and saved her money for our vacation.

That evening dad was late so brother and I got to bed. We were in bed but of coarse we could not sleep from the anticipation of the vacation. We heard mom and dad talking loudly almost as if they were having an argument. We went out to see what was the problem and found mom crying and dad sitting there looking as if someone died. They did not want to tell but mom could not help herself, my dad had lost his job. They assured us that everything would be O.K. and that nothing was going to ruin our trip. I was old enough to know that things may only get worse.

This time it was morning and I woke up to my brother holding his stomach and yelling really loud. He must have been in awful pain to be yelling like that. It seemed like a few minutes but there we were waiting in the emergency room. A doctor came out to talk to us and as if he were ordering a pizza he regrets to tell us that my brother had a tumor the size of a baseball in his stomach and he wanted to remove it by the end of the day. Mom started to cry and turn pale at the same time. She looked at my dad and said "we are not going to be able to afford this".

I had assumed that with the fact that my father just lost his job meant that we also lost our health insurance. In the end everything turned out alright, brother got his surgery and recovered wonderfully and he ended up being covered through COBRA which my father was able to maintain after he was let go from his job. My mother was able to work full time and I also got a job to pitch in. For as long as I live I will never forget the look on my mom's face that day and the words "how are we going to pay for this".