[KirisMum]

Thank you, Kris. That is such a sweet offer. :-) Kiri lives in Allston, at least for now; she's moving to a farm in Wayland in January. Truthfully, she kicked ME out, so not sure she thinks she needs any motherly company. LOL. The independence of 25-year-olds. But I sure do appreciate your company on this board!

She will be 26 in January so even if we could put her on our policy, it would only be for a few weeks. Fortunately she has excellent coverage with Boston College. She got her first bill--not that she was responsible for anything more than her copay, but I nearly fainted when she read me the amount. For the ONE DAY when she had the breast MRI, the mammogram, and the needle biopsies, $17,000!!!! Good God. I don't know what we would do if she didn't have good insurance. I agree, it's a crime that all our citizens aren't properly protected. But it's a complicated issue. I am Canadian and grew up with government healthcare and benefitted tremendously from it when I had a pituitary adenoma that required surgery in 1977 and 1979. I had the world expert surgeon in the transphenoidal approach in my own home town and it didn't cost me a cent. I would still be paying off my medical bills otherwise. OTOH, my Dad tore his rotator cuff in the late nineties and it took him a year to get an MRI, and that was with connections at a major Toronto hospital. By then it was way too late to do anything, his post-op meds got mixed up, there was some indication he might have suffered a mild stroke during surgery, and he basically went downhill from that time until he suffered a major stroke in 2005 and died 6 months later. He was in his seventies, with HBP, so it all could have happened anyway, but the delay in the MRI was very frustrating, and considering Kiri had an ultrasound at Brigham and Women's on a Tuesday and went in the following day for her MRI, mammo and biopsy, I am very grateful she was diagnosed and living in Boston.