Another Childfree Person Falls Through the Cracks

Earlier this month I wrote a post titled “Are We a Family?” Most childfree couples say “Yes, we are!” However, our social institutions sometimes don’t see it that way and some of the government agencies that are set up to help families in need overlook the families of two.

An example of this came to me by way of email by a woman I will call “Susan” (as she didn’t want her real name to be used). Susan wanted to share “a terrible experience” she recently had when a horse-related accident left her with limited use of her right arm.

I was collecting unemployment at the time from an earlier work lay-off. [My husband and I] were struggling financially and I was without health insurance when the accident occurred. I had four surgeries post accident to repair my shoulder/clavicle/arm. Though I was fortunate to not break my neck or lose my arm, the accident changed my life.

To make a long story short; with no health insurance and limited income, I turned to DSS/Medicaid for assistance. This was extremely defeating to me, but the system is there to help people through crisis (even though it’s widely abused). However, what occurred during my DSS interview was disturbing to me. I was unable to qualify for Medicaid because my unemployment earnings were too high for this county's cut off ($706 for a woman with no children).

During the interview I was also screened for any possible social service help that I might qualify for, and I qualified for NONE...... however, a social worker came into the [cubicle] where I was being interviewed and told me I qualified for ONE program - "Reproductive Counseling". I immediately asked if this included any gynecological services (pap smear etc), and it did not. Upon questioning exactly what this program was, it was explained to me that it is a program offered to all women that consists of counseling on abstinence and safe sex! The irony; I'm 40 with NO children....and I got to that age birth-free BY CHOICE. Did they think I'd be interested??! Hell no.

The moral of the story is--if I had been pregnant or had any amount of children, I would have qualified for many services that I desperately needed due to consequences from my accident. To me, this sends a 'back door message' to get pregnant so the system would WORK FOR ME! How ridiculous!

When I read Susan’s story, I wondered “How did this social worker come to the conclusion that a person seeking help with a limited mobility disability and medical care access would need reproductive counseling?”

Working Wives, Unemployed Husbands

In the current recession, two things are happening which we need to address politically and individually. One, women are increasingly becoming the breadwinners in their families and two, when the breadwinner loses their job the whole family is at risk of losing their health insurance.

A fascinating and timely article titled Women Breadwinners, Men Unemployed written by Heather Boushey, the Senior Economist at the Center for American Progress examines these current realities and their impact on our lives. Boushey notes:

The reason that more married couples now boast women as the primary breadwinners is because men have experienced greater job losses than women over the course of this recession, losing three-out-of-every-four jobs lost. This puts a real strain on family budgets since women typically earn only 78 cents for every dollar men earn.

What’s equally worrisome is that most families receive health insurance through the employers of their husbands. So when husbands lose their jobs, families are left struggling to find ways to pay for health insurance at the same time they are living on just a third of their prior income.

Worrisome, indeed. Even though my husband and I are married and have been for over twenty years we have a “single + one” health insurance plan through his work that, if he were to lose his job, would be very expensive to replace, even though we are only insuring two relatively healthy people with no life threatening pre-existing conditions.

My income as a writer would not come close to covering this cost. Which is why I’m tempted to contact my representatives in government during their summer break and encourage them to move fast to make sure we pass some kind of health care reform bill.

Families of all incomes and sizes need to be protected, recession-proofed, so that even more people do not become uninsured.

Flickr Photo by keltickelton (cc)