Get on Welfare or Get Rich: My Two Health Care Choices

Because it's your story too.

I do two things with my life: I am self-employed, and I raise children. I don't make much money. I live cheap, I have less than $5,000 in debt, and I'm in college working on my English degree. I'm also dealing with the tail end of a CPS case, which began with the kidnapping of my children by their father. In 2007, during our breakup and before the divorce, the children were snatched from our home in Idaho and hidden in Vancouver, Wash., for three months. My son was 2 ½; my daughter was 10 months old. I abandoned everything in Idaho and moved to Vancouver with nothing but my jewelry supplies and my cat, but I didn't see the children again until the state had taken them into custody, due to the condition they were in. They were placed into foster care and we were separated for a year and a half.

I'll leave to others the discussion of whether or not the separation should have lasted that long. CPS has its own internal problems, which manifested themselves in my case as multiple changes of personnel; we had three social workers during that time, each of which duplicated some of the work of the others. I have restarted my life in Vancouver, gone from homelessness to renting a three-bedroom house, successfully defended myself in dependency court and won full custody in divorce court, and the children are living at home now. The issues I'm facing at this point have to do with my children's emotional health, and -- let's face it -- mine.

At my present income level, I qualify to have the children on state insurance, and they do pay for therapy. My concern when it comes to this legislation is how the future will go. What will happen to us when my income reaches the point where the state won't cover me anymore? Section 1002 of Title I of H.R. 4872, regarding personal responsibility, states that individuals who "choose to remain uninsured" will pay an "assessment" of $325 in 2015, which jumps to $695 in 2016. I am the owner of a developing sole proprietorship, which is a long way from profitability. I will neither have the money to pay the premiums an insurer will charge, nor have the money to pay the government fine -- sorry, assessment -- I would be charged for not having insurance. Section 1001 provides cost-sharing for people with incomes up to 400 percent of the federal poverty level to help pay premiums, but starting in 2019, it also places a cap on the tax credit growth rate if insurance premiums grow faster than the consumer price index. This means that if there is a disparity, we'll pay the difference.

There is a wide financial sector in this country called the middle class. As a person in economic disaster recovery, I'm not there yet. This legislation makes it certain that I won't get there. Rather than make me more confident in my family's future, this legislation has introduced a huge measure of uncertainty for me. If it plays out the way it appears to be headed, I have two choices: Get on welfare and stay there, or get rich without passing through middle-income territory. That doesn't seem very likely. My children and I have gone through enough uncertainty without needing the good ol' US of A providing any more.

So how is this your story? Your children probably weren't taken. You probably don't face daily issues with depression or have to figure out therapy coverage. You do, however, have your own issues. I'd guess that you don't have any more answers than I do about how one would cover one's children on a bootstrap budget. I don't think we were in a perfect position before this legislation was passed, but at least I had control over my decisions. Looking at this lumbering behemoth of a law, I am afraid.