Feb 12, 2021 01:33PM celand wrote:

I have been very fortunate in my lifetime of always being covered by medical insurance - my parents when I was a child until young adult, then when I was a young, single adult employer based coverage, then thru my husband's employer based coverage when I got married. Although at some point in time my husband got a single policy and I covered myself and our two girls on a family policy because it was cheaper for us to do that.

Now I have also been fortunate in that I was relatively healthy when I was younger other than an occasional cold, virus only going to the Dr for my annual wellness check up.

But once I turned 51 my breast cancer diagnosis, surgery and treatment changed all of that for me. Once again, I am fortunate that I am covered under my employer based health insurance plan, all of my dr's are in network and I have managed to be able to pay my co-pays and very little more. (One of our family physicians became concierge practice so had to switch to another PCP as our family could not afford her fees)

Now what frightens me is what my 30 yr old daughter is going through with getting medical coverage. She makes too much money to qualify for help with expense of coverage but cannot afford to buy a policy! She did pay for the cheapest ACA policy which was $35 per month but $8000 deductible! She reasoned that she could not afford the deductible so discontinued that policy! She has not been to the dr since age 26 when my insurance stopped covering her. I fear for her and others in the same situation as her. She has gone to Urgent Care a couple of times for minor things and luckily a mental health professional will see her every 3 months for $80 to prescribe her depression medication (Good RX). The USA will have to come up with some type of public health option for people in this situation.

My younger daughter is disabled and over age 26 but my meducal insurance has included her on my policy for life although she still gets Medicaid but my insurance is her primary so private drs will still see her.

Celand

Feb 12, 2021 07:00PM moth wrote:

SondraF, I think in my province verzenio/fulvestrant didn't get approved till May 2020. It's back to the "needs of the few vs needs of the many" calculations that publicly funded health plans have to make. It's frustrating when it's *us* that are the few. I heard in chemo room gossip last time I was there that a gyne cancer pt was driving over to the US for trodelvy for something like 20k/month. Eeek.