Lawyer Mama

Hear My Story: Health Care Stories from Mothers

I'm incredibly lucky.  I've never had to worry about health care.  You see, I was born into a military family and CHAMPUS, and then TRICARE, covered me until the day I got married.  (Note to naysayers of "government run" health care: TRICARE covers all active duty military families.) 

Then I was on my husband's employer paid health insurance through law school and up until I started working full time as a lawyer.  As you may imagine, working for a law firm provides excellent benefits.  In fact, my first law firm covered 100% of my health insurance premium and a very large percentage of my husband's and then Hollis's premiums.

When we moved down to Southeast Virginia and I left my law firm with the fabulous benefits, we switched to T's plan offered through his company.  It was basically the same plan offered by my new law firm, but we were required to pay less of the premium.  So, we had a lot of choices.  Either way, we always knew that our family would be covered.

When I was pregnant with Hollis I developed gestational diabetes.  I had a high risk pregnancy and many complications, one of which resulted in twice weekly ultrasounds, constant biophysical profiles at the hospital and an emergency c-section on a day I certainly wasn't planning to have a baby.  The bills for my pregnancy, surgery and our hospital stay easily topped $70,000.  With Holden, we went through the same routine but the high risk care and constant monitoring started even earlier because we already knew what was going to happen.  So with Holden, I probably easily racked up $80,000 in bills. 

Out of the $150,000 or so in pre-natal and hospital care I received, we paid maybe $1000.  And I'm erring on the high side in my estimate.  Feel free to hate me, but I know how lucky I am.  Never once did I have to worry about how I would pay for my medical care.  Never once did I have to choose between paying my mortgage or paying for the ultrasounds that ensured my babies were healthy while housed in my flawed, diabetic body.

When I read stories like Sophie's, I realize just how lucky I am.  I never had to worry about a choice between healthy children and bankruptcy, or owning a home, or buying groceries. Those are choices a mother should simply never have to make.

In response to all of this, MOMocrats is running a series called "Hear My Story."  With this series, we'll be highlighting the stories of mothers, real people like all of us, and their experiences with our current health care system: mothers like Natalie, who has fought tooth and nail and given up career advancements to ensure that her daughter can remain insured; mothers like Karoli, who lives in fear that her husband has undiagnosed heart disease that they simply can't afford to have diagnosed; mothers like Sheila, who have discovered that something as simple as an ear infection can render us "uninsurable;" mothers like Jennic, who have survived cancer only to discover that insurance companies won't touch her with a 10 foot pole.

If you'd like to participate, grab the button code below and share your story.  We'll be collecting your stories and hand delivering them to key elected officials in Washington, D.C. 

Our goal is to make Congress listen, without screams and angry signs, but with the words of the mothers of this nation who are worried about keeping their families healthy.  We're doing this, not just for our children, but for every child and every mother in America. No mother should ever worry about whether she can afford to keep her children healthy. No mother should ever have to choose between bankruptcy and adequate health care.

<a href="http://momocrats.typepad.com/momocrats/"><img src="http://momocrats.typepad.com/hear.jpg/"> </a>

As an added bonus, I'm one of the lucky 1% or so of gestational diabetics who become full fledged diabetics during pregnancy.  It's the gift that keeps on giving.  While it's great for guilt tripping the kids when they get a little older, it's a little terrifying to think of what could happen. I'm now self-employed. If my husband loses his job or his health insurance, no insurance company will touch me with a 10 foot pole.  I am completely uninsurable under an individual policy.

So, yes, I have to say again that I am incredibly lucky.  But I don't think that "luck" is the basis for good public policy.  Our families deserve more.

A Boy and His Dog

Well, it's actually two boys and their dog, but "a boy and his dog" just sounds better, don't you think?

We got Buddy a few days ago.  We've been talking about getting the boys a dog for awhile now in a very abstract sort of way.  But after the break-in, I decided it was time to make it a reality.  Of course, up until the bitter end Holden was insisting that he didn't want a dog, he wanted a sheep and then a hamster.  But now that Buddy is here, he's gotten on board with the whole dog thing.

I promise I'll post some video soon because it is just too darn cute when Buddy goes galloping after Hollis or Holden on his stumpy little legs with his ears flopping around.

Lawyer Mama in Ms. Magazine

Color me shocked.  My good friend and fellow MOMocrat, Joanne Bamberger (aka PunditMom), mentioned me and the MOMocrats when she was interviewed by Kara Jesella for an article in Ms. Magazine, Cyberhood is Powerful: Moms Increasingly Taking up Blogging.  (You can read an excerpt in the link to Alternet but you have to go buy the magazine to read the whole article, including my mention.)  In turn, Ms. Jesella mentions Lawyer Mama and the MOMocrats in her article.

When I saw the title, I was expecting yet another story about moms who blog, it's all about the kids, yadda yadda, Dooce, yadda yadda.  But Ms. Jesella's article is one of the first to take a look at the political side of moms who blog.  She interviewed some political punditry heavy weights, including Joanne, Veronica Arreola of Viva la Feminista and Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner of Moms Rising. 

The fact is, mothers who blog tend to cover lots of topics.  Yes, I write about my children, my family and my marriage.  But just as frequently I touch on politics or feminist issues.  In fact, at MOMocrats I write even more about politics than you necessarily see on this blog.  I am not just a "mommy blogger."  Thank you, Ms. Jesella, for pointing out that moms who blog have insightful thoughts on more than just diaper brands and breastfeeding.

Now I'm heading off to Pittsburgh tomorrow for Netroots Nation and the "MOMocrats panel", The Revolution Begins at Home: Involving Parents in Politics through Social Media.  If you'll be at NN, please come by.

Another View of the Criminal Justice System

 When most people think of the law, they think of cops and robbers, the TV show Law & Order and maybe a dedicated district attorney putting criminals away in a 1 hour storyline.  The good guys are always vindicated and the bad guys always go to jail.

Not me.  I'm a lawyer, and a civil litigator at that.  When I was in law school and people asked me what kind of law I wanted to go into I swore up and down I would *never* do criminal law on either side of the aisle.  I said I didn't want that kind of responsibility.

In my first incarnation of an attorney, I was a civil litigator specializing in contract law.  A partner at my first firm once told me that the great thing about it was "It's just money, and it's not ours."  So I've managed to stay pretty far away from the criminal side of my profession and I liked it that way just fine.

Fast forward to 4 days ago when two thugs broke into my house.  While I was in it.

I was upstairs working in my office, heard a door and went down to investigate, thinking T had come home early.  I went down our second staircase and surprised two young white guys hauling a laundry basket down our main stair case.  In the split second it took me to decide that they were not there to do my laundry for me, I slammed my hand down on the alarm system and sent the burglars fleeing out the back door they had smashed in.

The police came very quickly; I gave fabulously accurate descriptions in an attempt to shatter all those things we know about how unreliable eye witness testimony is; the K9 dog came and tracked them out to the highway; forensics came and got nothing, except for some very slimy prints that I think contained PB&J at about waist height.

And then I fell the fuck apart.

I couldn't track down T and had to send my dear friend Lauren over to his office to fetch him.  We all camped at Lauren's that night, played with Lauren the next day, I went to work with T on Thursday and camped out in a vacant office, and then T stayed home with me on Friday.  I haven't been alone in my house yet.

Our back door has been fixed, and fixed very well.  That mofo is STRONG now.  But still, with those random scruffy, thuggy KIDS out there, my home no longer feels safe and cozy.  The privacy I used to adore in our backyard is now the reason "they" were able to break into my house, despite a well traveled street and a home full of elderly people staring out at it every day from across the street!

I was starting to wonder how long I could occupy the office in T's building before they start charging me rent.  Then my detective called today.  He asked me if I thought I could recognize the assholes who broke into my house again.  (Of course, he didn't actually call them assholes.)  I said yes, so he's putting together a photo line-up for me to look at in the next day or so.

I'm trying not to read too much into this, but I'm secretly hoping this means they caught them breaking into another house and would like to add on another charge and close my case.

To keep from getting terribly nervous, I've decided to treat it as a legal exercise.  I learned all about legal line-ups during crim pro.  Let's put it to the test.  And let's see if I *can* remember what they look like.  I gave a pretty accurate description at the time and, of course, I have those pictures in my mind that won't go away.  But maybe, just maybe, if I see them again in two dimensional form, they'll stop being so three dimensional in my dreams.  And then maybe I can delete my brand new post category, fear.