The cap is going to hurt us, too. We pay $60/week in copays for DS's speech and OT. That alone is over $3k. Other DS has allergies & asthma, and the copay for his allergy Rx (the only one that works for him- Rynatan) is over $60/month- and he has 5 rx's for asthma on top of that, though those don't have to be refilled as often. We make a lot of medical payments for our family of 4.
And your trade off is two-fold... Your family can no longer be denied health insurance for a pre-existing condition (or terminated for one), and you will no longer be held to a life time maximum. We are in a similar situation, only our weekly therapy copays between two boys was $100/wk last year, and jumped to $150/wk this year when our specialist copay went from $20 to $30. Last year we paid $25K for our premiums, copays, exclusions and out of pocket - so you can just imagine what we're up to this year. Plus this year we have NeuroPsych that is billing 50/50, despite the fact that it's a true Cerebral/brain damage issue (cerebral palsy and seizure cause), not emotional/behavioral psych.
However - a few years ago, we came close to dangerously close to our lifetime max ($2M cap at the time). Fortunately, my husband's employer was going through a merger, and he didn't have to leave his job of 12 years. The insurance we have now is far worse, but worse is better than nothing, as we're "Uninsurable" on the open market.
In the end - there's a lot of complaints about the President or Congress. And while I'll be the first to say the bill is far from perfect, and that I think they should have put some special interests aside, or some politicians should have stopped acting like little brats and put the real needs of the country (not corporate profits) first. Not to mention the CRAZY (and I do mean CRAZY) rhetoric that has been taking place.
However, at the end of the day lives should never have been put in the hands of for profit corporations. Because when your life or whether your remaining as a member on their policy rolls is weighed against share holder profits and CEO bonuses - I guarantee you - you will not matter. It's profits first. It's been proven time and time again. My family has felt the reality of that time and time again. We're just one few of the fortunate ones that can pull out a credit card to cover the charges when our insurance company decides to arbitrarily deny something that is covered under our policy, while we fight for months to get them to reimburse us. 95% of the time, those denials would have a major health impact to our child - like life or death, and most often impact his feeding situation. Or worse yet - denying pre-term labor medication when I was carrying my second child, while having PTL and with a history of extreme preterm delivery. Yes, insurance companies suck. They need regulated - they need rules, and we need protections, a lot of them.
I really only do it for daily meds (claratin, albuterol) and not motrin, but I could.
