Our tiny community in northwestern Missouri has answered the need for local health care with a hospital in Fairfax. Like this story? Get the latest from the Daily Yonder directly in your inbox, twice each week. Richard Oswald Residents of Atchison and Holt counties, in northwest Missouri, viewed architectural drawings of the region’s new Fairfax hospital, now underway. Altogether, with insurance and everything we have to pay for out of pocket - prescription drugs, dental, and eye care - we spent over $20,000 to maintain our health and well being last year. That’s just a drop in the bucket compared to what we spend for ourselves, because with the same $5000 deductible we have on Ryan, Linda and I pay over $850 per month for health insurance. It costs us $150 per month for his health coverage. Ryan is 13 years old and as healthy as any child can be. Linda and I finished raising our first three children years ago, but since have adopted a grandson. Insurance companies should have to play by the rules, too. They then canceled her coverage and returned the premium a few days after cashing her check. The company accepted the payment but knew from our daughter’s medical records of her condition. One insurance premium was paid a few days late. Health insurance might have helped pay part of the cost of Carter’s delivery except for the problem many young farmers have at times: paying bills when they’re due. His parents are still making payments on his birth - and we celebrated Carter’s 9th birthday last week. When our grandson Carter was born by Caesarian section after a long labor, he and his mother were finally out of danger, but the costs of prenatal care and delivery had gone through the roof. As those fortunate enough to afford medical coverage discover, insurance policies seldom pay anything for pregnancy and childbirth.
Most medical insurance these days simply doesn’t help with that cost. Both our children have had to make time payments on the hospital costs of our grandchildren’s births. Linda and I have a married son and a married daughter, each self-employed, living on their own farms with their spouses. For some parents, it can amount to as much as $20,000. Today the cost to a young farm couple for simply birthing a child has gone off the scale. In those days feeding and clothing a child were the most expensive part of raising a family. Hospital costs for a normal delivery totaled about $300. McRae to tell my mother, “Yup, you’re pregnant.” And when I was born here on the farm outside of Langdon, Missouri, 1950, it cost another $15 for his drive up from Mound City to say, “Yup, it’s a boy,” and sign the birth certificate.īack in 1969, when Linda and I had our first child, a monthly visit to the general practitioner for a prenatal checkup was less than $50.
Richard Oswald Carter Elliott Ottmann celebrates a birthday (his folks are still paying for his delivery nine years ago).