I have a friend "Daphne" who I dance with, and she's in a tight spot. She asked me for advice, but I'm not sure what is the best advice to give her. She is a dancer and she is pregnant, but does not have health insurance or an alternate source of income.
She is worried because she doesn't know what to do for work after she starts showing in her pregnancy. How long does it normally take before someone starts to show, and what is the average time in the pregnancy that dancers stop dancing? She thinks that she only has 2 months or so to dance, but I told her that I thought it was more like 4 or 5 months.
She also is scared about how many medical bills she'd have to pay. She does NOT have insurance, although she makes decent money dancing from what I understand. It is true that insurance does not cover pre-existing conditions, so if she got insurance now it would be like "beating a dead horse," right? Or, are there any insurance programs(or PPOs) OTHER THAN Welfare/Medicaid that might cover at least a portion of the pregnancy/hospital expenses? And could hospitals offer payment plans that would allow you to pay the bill over an extended time, kinda like a credit card? From what she told me, she filed the bare minimum for taxes last year, just for the sake of reporting something so that the IRS wouldn't chase after her after she made a lot of travel purchases and things on credit cards that are tracked. She reported a gross income somewhere near $30K but used a lot of write-offs to bring her net taxable income down to about $5,000. Would this kinda tax return show a "financial need" for a sliding scale payment plan? However, her tax return states her job title as "dancer/entertainer" so that might be reason for the hospital to ASSume she makes a lot of money and expect her to pay full-price in cash, right? She said that she does not want to rely on welfare and she'd rather look at alternate financing options, such as a healthcare "line of credit" loan, or a partial discount with a sliding scale program, a payment program, etc. She is a conservative Republican LOL so she does not agree with milking the system for welfare, especially when she makes decent money and there are far more people in the world in a much worse spot(retail jobs, unemployment, disability, etc). What are the best options for Daphne? She seems very distraught and even said something the other day about maybe considering abortion, even though she is a hard-core Republican and normally very much against that, so I'm very worried about her situation. Thanks so much!


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