One step away...

Peter Gosselin was the guest today on NPR's Talk of the Nation talking about his book: "Highwire: the Precarious Financial Lives of American Families" wherein he was discussing the case studies of families across the country who have found themselves one financial episode away from ruin.

These weren't just low income families living off of minimum wage, these were middle to upper-middle income households that suffered an unexpected illness or financial set back that catastrophically destroyed everything that they worked for.

Gosselin went on to discuss that these families actually had taken out precautions against these types of things: i.e. in the form of (what they believed were) proper insurances and savings. But when a woman who was an insurance agent (selling health insurance no less) was hit with MS, the very same insurance she was selling and had as personal coverage denied covering the illness. It took her 4 years and attorney's fees to have them reverse the decision.

Maybe this partly plays into areas covered by Michael Moore's "Sicko" about the atrocities of health insurance coverages in America (never mind the 60 million who don't have coverage, but what about those that dutifully pay for it and have shit for coverage or insurance companies that deny rightful claims!), but what actions are each households in America taking to hedge against possible future calamity?

My wife is a stay-at-home mom but has career experience as a teacher so if I lost my job, she possibly could go back to work if it turned out to be a terrible loss. And I have life insurance, health insurance, disability insurance, cash savings, retirement savings, etc to help plan for reasonable future of possible events. But where do we draw the line? Or to ask a better question, do I really know what my policies actually state that if something did happen that the monies I've been paying each month aren't just toasted due to lack of coverage?

The answer is that I don't really know. It's a little scary - I try to do my due-diligence and meet with my insurance providers and read their pamphlets of information, but unless you're an expert in contracts and/or the health insurance provision schemes it's a bunch of very tiny print that changes (literally) monthly.

I've had several job changes over the last few years - enough to make our household a little calloused to the fears that come from massive change. I can assure you it's manageable, but it still doesn't take away the overall fear that you don't really know what's going to happen in the near or even long term future.

With the instability in the markets and the very real potential that the money that I'm putting into my retirement savings each month would actually be better served going under the mattress. Who knows what my retirement picture will really look like. The experts don't really know what the picture of Wall St. will look like in the next 18-24 months so Ryan in Podunk Boise will have to just deal.

And maybe that's the real problem - our social networks of blending at least the availability of resources seemed to have dissolved into a free-for-all capitalist only driven society (which I blame squarely on the Republican administrations starting with Regan). Gosselin even spoke about the minimum requirements we have to one another as framed in the Mayflower Pact stating what individuals must do and what a community must also provide.

There are things that maybe we're just not entitled to - such as a risk free life. I've stated in earlier postings that companies need to recognize their moral obligations and avoid the moral hazards of making decisions without consequence. The same goes for us as the American individual. We need to take the steps to be in due diligence, but also for those steps to be honored by those companies who appear to provide the proper insurance to follow through when they are called upon. It's a basic contract agreement - I pay you this to have this type of service in return. Our risk is that we'll pay for years and never use it - their risk is that you may pay only for a short while and have to shell out cash.

It's time that we all take the steps to make good decisions and use the resources that are around (and available!) to each and every one of us. We should push our legislators to SIMPLY the process of obtaining adequate safety nets and when those nets are in place that they will be honored.

Has anyone else ever mulled this over?