Family History

I was thinking about health insurance.

And how much "stuff" is in our family.

Hemophilia
Hypothyroidism
Type 1 Diabetes
Type 2 Diabetes
High Cholesterol (genetic)
Cystic Fibrosis
Colon Cancer
Lung Cancer
Periodontal Disease
Grave's Disease
Recurrent Idiopathic Pneumothorax
Carcenoid Sarcoma
Asthma
Depression
Alcoholism
Stroke
Heart Disease
Autoimmune (Lupus? MS? don't know yet)

All this illness. Serious illness. And, you know, my family is normal. It's not a big family by any means and I'm only including relatively immediate family (no great aunts or second cousins by marriage, etc....). I'm including husband's side and my one here, too.

If you walked up to any of us and asked if we were "healthy" short of a couple folks (the CF one and the lung cancer one) we'd all say "Yep."

Treatment of any one of the above could financially ruin a person. And, we're a normal family. No major car accidents, workplace accidents, trauma.

If we're normal and we all have insurance (I'm ticking the family members off in my head as I write, and we all do have employer sponsored insurance), what about all the other "normal" people who don't?

But maybe what I think of as "normal" is relative. Maybe someone else would read this list and say "whoa! you guys are a train wreck". I don't know.

I'm pretty pissed about this, though.