Rant: Health Insurance

I'm SO upset right now. DH just got the new information for insurance for his job. It's highway robbery. No kidding. We are currently paying $500 a month JUST for him and myself. Our children, being half Native American, are covered through the state. If we were to add them we'd be paying $900 a month. My husband makes $15 an hour and we survive off of his income alone (+ his VA disability of $400 a month and his G.I. Bill paying our $1100 a month rent for a modular home in a REALLY low income part of town). We just got the new rates for insurance for the next year. The current rates are crippling us, but the coverage is good. Very good. So, we found out that we're going to have to go from paying $250 a pay check ($500 a month) for insurance to $412 a pay check, or $894 a month!!!!! HOLY GEEZ!!! DOUBLING our rates! The crappy part? Our ER visit co-pay will go from $100 a visit to $200 a visit, Drs visits will go from $10/$20 a visit to $15/$25 a visit. We go from paying flat rates for things like hospitalizations to paying a percentage!!!!! WHAT THE HECK! So, they're doubling our monthly premium and then upping our co-pays and such???? He'll go from bringing home $900 a pay check to $700 a pay check and we just can't afford that!!!

We can't afford it. There's no other way around it, we can't afford it. Our only option is to drop the insurance all together and have me go back on medicaid. I DON'T want to do that. We fall in the income bracket for it in our area, but GEEZ...I don't want to have other people paying for our planned pregnancy. A pregnancy that we could afford last month but can't afford next month.

We can drop our rate down, choose a cheaper plan, but then our costs go up so much more that we can't afford the care that way either. ARG! Why does his company HAVE to go with a company that is SO STINKING EXPENSIVE!!!! There are other companies out there, why do they have to go with THIS one????

I don't know what to do. I'm in tears right now. This is SO not fair!!!