Families shouldn’t live in fear of healthcare costs

In the summer of 2019, I took my girls down to the Stokke Trail, an easy stretch of asphalt that runs along the Red Cedar River in Menomonie. My oldest daughter, Inga, was six at the time, and still learning to ride her bike.

I wanted to let Inga ride the open trail and give her a chance to work on getting her bike up off her training wheels. We went up the trail a bit, with Inga leading and me behind, pushing her younger sister, Harriet, on her trike.

Inga was doing great, but on the way back, she must have gotten tired. She came to a spot where the asphalt had caved in, ever so slightly, just enough to veer her off the trail and down the very steep hill leading down to the river. Because of her training wheels, the bike did not fall over as she picked up speed.

Inga couldn’t swim and the river’s current, just below the dam’s spillway, would be intense, even for a serious swimmer. This is what I was thinking about, as I sprinted after her, my body hollowed out by fear. It’s what I was thinking when, for a few terrifying seconds, I lost sight of her.

She didn’t go in the river. Fortunately, she was stopped by a fallen tree. When I got to her, she was crumpled up under her bike, tangled up in the brush. I helped her stand. She was trembling and had blood in her mouth.

I asked if she could walk; she thought so. She could move her fingers and arms, but it hurt. When we got back to the trail, I handed her a water bottle, so she could rinse out her bloody mouth and we made our unsteady way back to the car.

Inga kept telling me that she thought we needed to go to the hospital and that maybe

her arm was broken. I assured her it was not broken, since she could move it so freely. (In case it is not glaringly obvious at this point: I am not a medical doctor.) I told her we would get her home, settle her on the couch under her blankie, get some Ibuprofen and she would be fine.

The truth was – and I am not proud of this – I was thinking about the last time we took one of the kids to the emergency room, maybe a year before. Harriet, who had just started walking, came home from daycare with a wonky leg. She would take a step or two, and her knee would buckle. An x-ray showed it was nothing, a sprain.

Either because of our deductible or since the x-ray didn’t turn up anything, it was deemed “unnecessary” and we ended up paying more than $400 for the visit. So when Inga was saying she needed to go to the hospital, my response wasn’t, “Sure, baby, anything you need.” Instead, I was thinking, “That’ll cost us another $400.”

By the time we got to the car, there was another voice in my head, this one a little more insistent, asking, “What kid wants to go to the hospital?” I finally stopped thinking about the cost and instead listened to what my daughter was telling me. We went straight to the hospital, where we learned she had not just one, but two, broken wrists.

Our family is lucky, we have insurance through my wife’s employer, yet my fear about the bill had allowed me to convince myself that my daughter was fine.

When I think about it now, I wonder if things would have been different if we didn’t have insurance – if I was facing a $4,000 or $40,000 bill, instead. I like to think I would have done what was best for my daughter, no matter the cost, but for those without affordable insurance, the decision sometimes isn’t so easy.

When Congress passed the Affordable Care Act in March 2010, the bill provided funding to assist states in expanding state-run Medicaid programs, like Wisconsin’s BadgerCare. States were allowed to accept the expansion or opt out. Nationwide, lawmakers refused the offered expansion and the federal aid that would have gone with it.

Wisconsin is one of 12 states that continues to refuse the expansion, which means that, to date, lawmakers in Madison, have left close to $5 billion in federal funding on the table, money which could have freed up revenue streams for other initiatives and would have helped tens, even hundreds of thousands, of Wisconsinites, gain access to healthcare.

Now, as part of the most recent COVID relief package, another $1 billion has been allocated for Wisconsin to expand BadgerCare, on top of the $450 million Wisconsin would receive under the ACA, to help Wisconsin workers gain access to healthcare. Yet, again, lawmakers have dug in their heels.

The Wisconsin Farmers Union (WFU) is among groups currently advocating for the proposed change, and for lawmakers to take federal funds and expand the program.

“When you’re a farmer, you’re self-employed and not getting insurance through work,” said WFU organizing director Bill Hogseth. “Depending on other factors, you may or may not be able to afford private insurance.”

Hogseth pointed out that, in Wisconsin, as in many other states, rural counties have the highest uninsured rates, which means rural hospitals in particular feel the hit when people can’t afford to pay for healthcare.

“It hasn’t gotten too bad here, yet,” he told me, “but in southern states, where lawmakers have refused the expansion, you’re seeing rural hospitals having to shut down.”

When conservative media talks about social programs like BadgerCare, invariably they paint a picture of lazy people who don’t want to work. That certainly doesn’t describe the people I have met or talked to who are, or have been, on BadgerCare.

No country’s healthcare system is perfect. People receiving care through a nationalized health program, like those in Canada or the UK, can often experience longer wait times for elective procedures. Such a system is certainly imperfect, and I am sure that those countries are working to fix those sorts of problems.

But a system, like the one we have, where some people have their health costs paid for, while others are bankrupted by them, is not only imperfect, it is immoral. If we are going to continue to rely on employers to provide Americans with access to healthcare, then it is our responsibility to implement programs, like BadgerCare, that extend healthcare access to those people who work jobs that, for whatever reason, do not provide them with insurance, including the self-employed.