My health insurance, which the girls are on, moved to a self-insured health insurance plan at the first of the year. Our deductibles have gone from $1000 to $3000, since we can't afford $300 per month more in premiums. I would switch the kids over to Lone Star Pa's health insurance in a heartbeat (ours used to be better but now his - which hasn't gotten any better - is), but our open enrollment periods are six months apart, so the only way to stay employed and do that would be either to have the kids uninsured for half a year or to pay double for both for half a year, neither of which will work for us.
I spent the 20 minutes that is allotted to me for lunch yesterday and the day before on the phone with the new prescription administration group for the plan. We are now required to use this mail-order thing for all "maintenance" prescriptions and I just burst into tears thinking of how much work it is going to be to transfer all of the Lone Star Girl's prescriptions and figure out when they need to be ordered and paid for in three month supplies, seeing as how they are mostly not medicines as easy to count as pills. Then they tried to talk me into getting her Epi-pens mail ordered, too, but that's not going to happen, seeing as how the medicine stops working if they are exposed to heat, and how dangerous it is.
And, of course, we are the lucky ones. We have health insurance, even if it gets continually degraded.
What I would not give not give for a strong public option.
But the Republicans in Congress want to repeal even the bit of Health Care Reform that they let squeeze through. Of course, they plan to keep their own excellent public health insurance plans - they just don't want the rest of us to have access to those benefits.
4 comments:
Oh this makes me heartsick (does insurance cover that?). I just cannot fathom why this country is so cruel as to let most of its citizens suffer with no or inadequate coverage for health care--how had the rest of the modern world gotten this right when we have it so, so, so, so wrong (OK, I can fathom. It's profit and greed. Profit and greed. $3000 deductible? That is not OK!!! I'm so sorry this has happened to your family (and so many others).
What a misery, LSM--good luck making the best choice you can for your family.
No real choices to make - we just keep on keepin' on.
I'm really worried about health insurance, too (of course), and it's an injustice that people can't get the coverage they need at fair prices. Some people say that we're a "nanny state" that expects the government to take care of us-- no, we want to take care of our own families. We want things to be fair, though. And they're not.
As frustrated as I was that there wasn't more done with the health reform bill, I thought, "At least health insurance companies will have to insure children." And people want to repeal that? How family friendly is that?
I feel the way about health insurance companies that some people feel about government... except that I don't even think insurance companies are a "necessary evil."
I'm breathing, and praying.... but it's going to take more than prayer.
Life is expensive.
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