US? FMLA? Just curious if you felt you couldn't take it due to company culture or if it just didn't apply to you? Either way, a horrible experience for you I know. I’ve been fortunate to work with folks that are family friendly when things like this arise. I can’t even imagine opening my laptop while in the hospital and in that headspace.
Yeah, in the US. I had 2 weeks-ish off total and random days/hours when there were big procedures, but was "saving" the rest for when my wife returned to work. My child was chronically sick (but worse than I/we knew), and I had no idea what the future had in store for us, I was worried if I "used" it all, then I'd be forced to work from home and care for my child.
I have a great manager, who would've been ok with whatever, but there's only so much I was entitled too. I also had bills rolling in, so anything unpaid was out of the question. I'm sure I could've survived with being unpaid, but living off GoFundMe donations didn't sit well with me. Ultimately GoFundMe paid for her funeral.
Unfortunately, insurance doesn't provide any pay for sick leave, but rather, makes medical bills less than they would be otherwise (in general). Lots of folks are stuck with unpaid leave from jobs they need for the health insurance, and it really is a shame.
It’s insane to me that our absurd health care system has routed around insurance systems shortcomings by literally begging friends, family and strangers to help us afford basic living.
And the insurance companies are laughing all the way to bank.
It's an alarming sign of political and social rot, IMO, that this has become so normal that barely-computer-literate people out in my flyover part of the US regularly launch healthcare-related GoFundMes, if their kids get seriously ill especially, and there hasn't been an overwhelming "holy shit, this is very not OK, drop everything and fix this now" reaction.
> It's an alarming sign of political and social rot
For some people, charity replacing government social safety nets is a feature, not a bug, since they want to control where "their" money goes. Sure, it sucks when you're not photogenic[1] enough to hit your GoFundMe targets, but look at the bright side: we'd have avoided wasteful government spending.
GoFundMe healthcare is a fractal representative of hypercapitalism/Capitalism with American Characteristics: people use GoFundMe as a last resort while healthcare organizations make absurd profits, then you zoom in and realize GoFundMe is a for-profit that gets a cut of the donations.
That’s unfortunate, as is the whole situation. My thought was it should protect your job/insurance and you’d have to still just pay your normal premiums. Potential loss of income depending on how your company handles that (my and my wife’s company has always opted to pay us). We paid the out of pocket maximum, something like $10K and that was it, realize that’s a substantial amount for some. I’d agree with the overall sentiment of the discussion, we should move towards a system that is predictable and humane and not so heavily tied to your employer at the moment. I work in healthcare industry for past 20 years (corp finance) and am continually perplexed by how silly things are.
If anyone else reading is ever in a similar situation talk to your HR department. I help HR departments negotiate things all the time. A common thing is taking an LOA and the company will pay your COBRA premiums. They don’t have to, it’s technically unpaid time, but if you have some savings and insurance is your barrier this is actually kind of common. But again, I’m in healthcare industry so YMMV.
