On healthcare reform

I've been thinking a lot about healthcare reform lately. Not because I've been paying much attention to the news. Honestly, I haven't. I have two kids, a husband, books to read, etc. I don't have time to pay a lot of attention to political wrangling. And I don't really care that much anyway.

Still, I think something needs to be done about our healthcare system. The past few months I've seen bill after bill after bill for expenses related to having a baby. My husband's employer is a relatively small family farm. We are extremely lucky to have health insurance but it's not the best insurance in the world and we have to shoulder a fairly significant burden when it comes to medical expenses. I am grateful for the coverage we have, please don't read this as complaining. Still, we've so far spent more than $3000 for a complication-free, natural, vaginal delivery plus prenatal care. And the bills are still rolling in.

This seems too much to me. I'm happy to pay my doctor. He was fabulous, very caring and wonderful. His bill actually doesn't bother me...he earned every penny. The bill that bothers me is the hospital bill. Really, it cost that much for me to spend one night in the hospital? Seems like a lot.

Now, I know there are other options. We could have had a home birth. But my doctor (who, again, is wonderful and I trust) wouldn't have done it. And my husband wouldn't have been comfortable with that. But we did everything right. I'm healthy. I've had two fairly easy pregnancies and normal deliveries and healthy babies. What would we do if something (God forbid) had gone wrong? How would we afford our portion of a catastrophe? And we have a decent income and okay savings stashed away. What do people without those things do?

One thing I think would help is if people knew in advance what things would cost. There is no price list available so it's hard to save for known medical expenses. Plus, if there were price lists then I could shop around...there are three hospitals close to us, maybe one of the other ones would have cost less. Since I know they are all fine hospitals then having that kind of cost information available could be very helpful. I'll stop rambling because I don't know how to solve this problem. Something needs to happen. I just don't know what.