My thoughts on "Just Say No To Nationalize Healthcare"

So, I've been procrastinating doing my taxes now for some time.  Usually, I can't get to the tax office fast enough.  I start preparing before I even get my W2 in the mail.  But this year, not so excited.

Why?

I had a business last year and unlike most, I did very well.  I sold this business only 4 days before the new year because my children's health seemed to be declining while my business needs were increasing.  I've been desperately trying to buy time to find as many deductions as I possibly can. 

But, I also have been buying time trying to scrounge up enough medical deductions.  Medical deductions are tricky.  You have to have 7.5% of your income to even be able to deduct them.  You can only deduct food you ate while inpatient.  You can only deduct $100 per day for hotel expenses.  You get a low mileage rate.  You can deduct any expenses you paid to medical professionals.  Sometimes I wonder is it even worth the time.  I was pretty sure I probably didn't have enough this year as my husband had a pretty good year and with my income, we're probably wasting our time.  However, I thought I'd start.

Here are our special needs statistics so far.  Having a sick child should automatically give you some sort of a tax credit.  Here are some of our stats, and I'm just getting started!

We have a $20 copay per doctor's appointment per child.  We have 2 children, both are sick.  Our pediatrician is 66 miles away.

We took 67 trips to the pediatrician.

We drove approximately 4422 miles to get to the pediatrician.

We spent $1864.83 in patient responsibility to the pediatrician alone.

This is with good insurance.  This doesn't include our pharmacy bills, hospital bills, other specialists appointments, or visits for my husband or myself.  It doesn't include our big trip of the year to Baltimore (a 9 hour drive for us) or the many trips we made to regional doctors (Atlanta and Greenville---both about 200 miles away).  It doesn't include stuff we can't deduct, like the expensive foods that are milk/soy free for our baby and remember when gas was $4/gallon---the mileage rate won't touch the amount of money we spent in gas. 

I had an old friend who wrote on Facebook "Just say no to nationalized healthcare".  I had to ask to her why she felt this way.

Her comment back was that all you had to do was look at other countries and see that wait times would increase and care would decrease.

What I get that people who are healthy don't, is that some care is better than none for those that aren't insured.  Longer wait times, well that would be because the people who are uninsured and aren't going to the doctor (like my successful self employed mother) would be getting care.  And, for people like us who have worked very hard to earn a good income, might would be able to not go broke trying to pay for our sick children.