Column: Jen Vogt-Erickson, My Point of View

I finally did it. I resigned most of my teaching position and am on the cusp of being a full-time mother. This both was and wasn’t a difficult decision — it’s hard to leave a teaching job I like, and it’s difficult to get back into it. On the other hand, I’m pregnant again, so I can’t deprive myself of sleep and overload on caffeine and sugar the way I usually do to get everything done. I also want to spend more time with my toddler and the baby when it arrives. Thankfully my husband was amenable to me staying at home, even though it cuts our household income and benefits in half.

So now I am in full-scale budgeting mode. In a backward measure of good fortune, I grew up in a household with little discretionary spending money (partly because my mother also decided to stay home when her children were young), and I learned from my mother how to save and conserve. She learned it from her mother, who kept practicing Depression-era thrift even during more prosperous eras.

In many ways we’re in good shape to live on less. We have just one car, and our only debt is our home mortgage. The one looming question mark is health insurance costs. For now we can swing it in our budget, but the cost increases each year are daunting. How long can we afford to maintain it on one salary? The rising cost has effectively wiped out more than the raises either of us have received in the past couple of years. It won’t be long before it costs more than our monthly mortgage. Will I have to look for work sooner than I want in order to help provide health insurance for our family?

While this is usually treated as an economic issue, it’s also a family values issue. How many moms (or dads in some cases) work mainly to provide health insurance for their families? How many would choose to stay home or work less if health insurance were more affordable? How many families have been forced to scale back their coverage even with two wage-earners because they can’t afford the premiums anymore? Some people argue this is a choice, but it seems to me it’s a vicious one, and not family-friendly.

A close friend and her husband dropped health insurance altogether for themselves and two children. They both have jobs and earn too much to qualify for Minnesota Care, but not enough to afford private insurance on their own. Here’s the kicker: If they paid for a high-deductible health insurance plan within their means, they wouldn’t have enough left to pay for out-of-pocket health care expenses.

It’s not just individual families struggling with these costs. A huge underlying factor in our federal and state budget mess is the present and projected costs of health care for government employees and all people over 65. Once employer-sponsored insurance becomes too expensive or too minimal for just about everybody who is fortunate enough to have a job, popular demand might lead to more political will for major reform. But how long do we have to wait to fix something that is already broken for so many?

Conservative lawmakers are raring to scrap “Obamacare” before it gets off the ground, but that plan doesn’t go far enough in getting costs under control anyway. And “market-based solutions” won’t solve the problem because there is too much profit to be made off people getting sick and needing expensive health care and pharmaceuticals. The only thing big enough to tackle this is universal health coverage, in which the government can shear off a substantial amount of the administrative costs of health insurance, negotiate lower prices for medications, and provide programs and incentives for people to stay healthy. Many European countries have such a system, and they spend less per person on health care and have better health outcomes than the US.

Would this be the government acting “as a nanny state”? My family never had a nanny, so that metaphor is too elitist for me to appreciate the inferred negative connotation. I think a better concept to insert in this context is “for the common good.” The U.S. Constitution refers to it as “promoting the general welfare.” Remember when people, including Republican leaders, used to believe that the government had a role in making life better for everybody? It wasn’t that long ago.

It’s only been since Reagan’s denigration of government that conservatives have dared to push the less-is-better mantle to the bitter extreme. In the process, the economic gains in our economy over the past 30 years have gone mainly to the top 1 percent, while the middle class and working class have struggled to maintain their footing. It’s hardly an accident. This is precisely why my socially conservative father has always said, “Republican? I can’t afford to vote Republican.”

My father, incidentally, is going to owe his eyesight mainly to veterans’ benefits, which pays for most of his expensive glaucoma medication, but at a negotiated cost. Thank you, Uncle Sam.

That’s two cents from a mom who would like to stay at home with her little kids and have the time and energy to cook a healthy dinner for her family every night—without foregoing health insurance or necessary medical care.

 

Jen Vogt-Erickson is a member of the Freeborn County DFL Party.