Before today, I had never heard of Amy Alkon, but thanks to Google’s tireless collecting of information, I have now. Ms. Alkon is an advice goddess in California, a syndicated giver of helpful information, so probably many people know of her. In late November she commented on a family featured in an article in the Los Angeles Times (“Hard choices on health care“). I never did see where the family asked her for advice.
The parents in the Times article have three children and homeschool the two who are within the age group affected by compulsory school attendance laws in California. In both of Ms. Alkon’s blog posts about the article, she objects to the mother of the family staying home with the children and not sending the children to public school. Her readers agree with her for the most part. (language alert for the sensitive)
One thing that rankles the writer and her readers is that the parents have too many children. The crime of irresponsibility in having had — “extrude” is used by one commenter — three children irritates many of the commenters, even though apparently at the time of the children’s births, the parents were as responsible as any other parents who maintain health insurance policies. I don’t know what you’re supposed to do if hard times hit after the kid is extruded.
Other complaints are:
- where the family live — they should sell the house and move
(although who the buyers would be in the wake of the sub-prime market mess, no one says) - that the house has too many nice things
(and if a granite counter was installed before the cash crisis, how would getting rid of it help them now?) - and that the mom should work for health benefits
(Starbucks is a popular choice, although I don’t know if making ca. $8 an hour will pay for childcare, transportation and gasoline, even if mom does qualify for health insurance)
The glaring non sequitur in the comments about how the family is a group of moochers is that neither the blogger nor her commenters mention the cost of the public school system they tell the parents to put the kids into. In California the proposed 2007/08 budget runs $50,446,000,000 for K-12 education. This is over two and a half times the rate for Medi-Cal (see chart on page 2), California’s brand of Medicaid.
If Ms. Alkon and her readers are angry about other people’s children costing them money — which is how it sounds in this part of the peanut gallery — take on the public school system. That’s where the big bucks are.
posted by Valerie
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It seems that the Advice Goddess can’t get past the concept of extruding children, so there might not be much hope for her and her fans anyway? Boy, I’d be asking her for family advice, all right.
Sometimes you have to wonder if Google really is our friend running into this kind of stuff.
Homeschooling costs these taxpayers money?! Definitely convoluted logic that went far with their speculations. From the Goddess..(syndicated…what’s going on in CA anyway?):
wouldn’t even be surprised if it comes out that it’s because they’re afraid of what the schools might pick up on if the kids were there.
I wondered something similar. Also, home schooling is like Prius driving. Sure, it has its benefits, but it’s also a major style statement, and if you live in a certain socially conservative community, home schooling is a definite social merit badge.”
Is there anything they haven’t thrown out there? I couldn’t read all of it, but I bet the family caused the terrible fires too and are now planning a mudslide for all of CA.
Good idea putting some real money facts out there, Valerie.
I don’t think I could bear to read it.
A far more relevant and intelligent response to the story on Amy’s part would have been to point out that, as anybody with half an investigate bone in her body would have discovered (I refer here both to Amy and to the “reporter” who wrote the story she was commenting on), as I did, that it appears that the family DOES qualify for reduced-cost medical coverage for their children, through Kaiser Permanente: $15/child/month for family of 5 making up to $72-someting-thousand. There would be a tiny co-pay for some services.
I also found a slew of lower cost (than their old policy) major medical policies that the parents could get (or the whole family if the Kaiser option didn’t pan out, such as if the $70K income figure was a round one, and they are actually making closer to $73K or more). Yes, the latter would involve some out-of-pocket, as all of the available policies have either deductibles, co-pays, or some combination of both, up to some annual O-O-P limit. So, yes, they could still find themselves faced with going over budget in a month/year that Dad breaks his arm, or whatever. Most of us have such cash-flow squeezes now and then — if it’s not a broken bone it’s a car repair, or a leaky roof, or an old washing machine that gives up the ghost. But unless there is something the article doesn’t tell us (they are all smokers, say), there appear to be several lower-cost options open to them, which I found by going to ehealthinsurance.com. (I used age 40 for both parents, and I had to look up their zip code.)
These articles (the original one about their situation) drive me nuts, because whenever I have followed up — just for kicks — to see if in fact the family really “can’t get” affordable insurance, I always, so far, have found much cheaper options than the article would lead us to believe are available.
That should be: investigative.