This is madness

This is what our crazy system has driven some people to do. The military health insurance system (TRICARE) covers pre-existing conditions so this man joined the army to try to save his wife's life because that's the only reasonable soultion he had.
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A family’s health-care struggle
After losing his job, he joins the Army so his wife can battle cancer

From the Oct. 16th Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Online edition


On a rainy morning in mid-October, Bill Caudle joined the Army.

An unremarkable occurrence, except just about everything about it was remarkable.

Caudle is 40. He was laid off from his job of 20 years. And his wife, Michelle, 39, was sick with ovarian cancer. Indeed, Bill Caudle was leaving precisely because his wife was sick.

His severance package had provided several months’ salary, but by August the paychecks were winding down. Soon the cost of his family health coverage was going to triple, then a few months after that, nearly triple again. They needed health-care coverage so Michelle could fight her cancer.

The solution: a four-year hitch in the Army.

The two are not fond of politics. They have paid little attention to the shouting over health-care reform. They have not gone to any of the town hall meetings.

But this year the national story of lost jobs became their story. And the saga of families losing health insurance was about to become theirs, too.

Except that Bill wouldn’t let it.

Look for their story in Sunday’s print editions of the Journal Sentinel and on JSOnline on Monday.