Let's do some math here. A married couple who both work in lower paying jobs earn $50,000 per year. They have two children. During their working years, they will earn $2.25 million. They are not poor and definitely do not qualify for Medicaid. Now, the cost for healthcare for this family, over their entire lifetime will come to $1.25 million based on the total cost of $7900 per year per person. So, this family will need to spend over half of their lifetime earnings on healthcare.
These are the real numbers, and they are scary because there are a great many people out there who fall in this category. Even if you up their annual earnings to $60,000 per year, they will still pay over 46% of their lifetime earnings toward healthcare. Medicaid is great for those who are dirt poor, but that really isn't that many people. Those are the people who are on welfare, not the working poor. And the numbers of the working poor are growing. We are slowly becoming a country of haves and have nots as the middle class is being squeezed more and more.
These are baseless assumptions.
If you are entitled to your own math I'm entitled to mine: Let me use a real life example. Five years ago a 63 year old man – not a preferred customer for health insurance by any means, because of advanced age – by competitive shopping, could get an excellent health insurance policy with a $1,000 deductible for $120. per month. That’s $1,440 per year plus the 1,000 deductible which together equal $2,440 per year. using that high (63 year old man) figure for example and just multiplying it by 2 adults for 47 years (65 at years at age of Medicare, minus 18 years being their age of maturity) and two children for 18 years (or up to the age of maturity) we come up with $229,360 for the two parents and $87,840 for the two children with a combined total equaling $317,200 for their entire period of needing health care and insurance, during which the "family" would be responsible for those costs up to the age of going on Medicare. This combined amount in my looslely based figures is only 25% of your loosely based figures.
In reality this family like many families will go years without any significant medical costs, or they would likely incur costs that would be less than the deductible I used which was $4,000 per year for the family.
It should also be taken into account that a child can be added to an adult’s insurance policy for much less than doubling that cost which I did, and that in the beginning, if that adult had acquired their insurance at the earliest possible age, at age 18, their rates should be much less than for an adult male, aged 63 in 2004.
BTW your $50,000 for two adults working would fit fairly accurately the state of my 63 year old man's residence and in which he purchased his health insurance policy.
