Reason number 86 why losing your job totally blows? Losing your insurance. And when I say this blows, I really mean it! I'm not a sickly person, but I do feel much better knowing I have coverage in case something does happen. Car wrecks, freak accidents, terminal diagnosis happen every single day. Those are just the huge issues. It is flu season, food poisoning happens, trip and break your ankle... all likely possibilities that could require a trip to the doctor or urgent care or better yet the ER.
About two years ago I was diagnosed with Hypothyroidism. (If you google this you'll see how non-serious it is and how common it is). It was March of 2009 that I started going to the doctor, and I literally went every month after that through October for follow ups and blood work to have my medication adjusted until the right dose was found. EVERY month it was adjusted up, or down. Also in March/April of 2009 my doctor told me "you have a lump" where my thyroid gland is (on your throat) and that I needed to have an ultrasound done to see what was going on. Not only did I completely lose my shit when he told me, but I had to go and have a procedure done. Turns out it was just an enlarged thyroid gland and no freakin' lump as he I had said. Side note, can't we PLEASE make it illegal or something for doctors to use the word "lump"? That was really not OK. January of 2010 I went back to the doctors for a follow up, and my medication wasn't right again. So I started going back to the doctor on a monthly basis with blood work being taken every month and my medication being adjusted all over the place. Finally in June of 2010 I went to see a specialist (I felt like my doctor just couldn't get it under control, he miss-read my results at my last appointment which in turn had him adjust my medication incorrectly, and told me that if we didn't get my thyroid under control it would be very hard to get pregnant as the thyroid was a regulator of your body) and she worked more with me on what made me feel better vs. just what my numbers said. I really liked her and felt like she listened to me. She ever so kindly reassured me that my thyroid levels were so close to normal that I shouldn't have any side effects/complications in trying to conceive-whenever that may be.
Hypothyroidism really isn't a huge deal. It just means that my thyroid doesn't produce enough "stuff" to function properly. Without the medication the biggest side effect is being sleepy all the time. I used to take a 2-3 hour nap almost every day after work and then usually a 2-3 hour nap on either Saturday or Sunday. I was always sleeping. My grandma has it, and so do millions of other people. I'll most likely be on some sort of daily medication for the rest of my life, and I'm OK with that.
So, as you can see, I was very fortunate to have insurance during that time. For almost a year straight I had monthly doctors appointments and monthly blood work done at the lab. Not having insurance now just makes me nervous. Before starting at the job I got laid off from, I didn't care if I had insurance or not. It never really mattered. Now it's just a necessity like gas for the car. The issue I'm running into now is just how expensive insurance is. My last job paid a set amount towards your coverage and you got to pick from like 15 different plans. If your plan cost less then what the company paid then you didn't have any paycheck deductions. If the plan you chose cost more, you paid the difference. I was paying about $36 per check for my health insurance AND vision and dental. Apparently that was a really sweet set up. To be added on to my husbands insurance is $400 per month. Did I mention I ended up taking a $4/hour pay cut in accepting this new job? I could get insurance through my job now but it's only a temporary position so in about six months, if they don't offer me a permanent position, I'll lose that insurance too. I could have done COBRA and extended my insurance from my last job, but that was close to $360 a month.
I've been looking getting private insurance, so no matter what my job situation looks like I'll still have coverage. I don't know if my little thyroid-fun-times is considered "pre-existing" or not, so getting something and getting established as soon as possible is a good thing because you never know what will happen. I've found some pretty reasonable prices on private insurance, as low as $100 per month. Granted, it's not as fabulous as the insurance I had, but it's better than nothing. The downside though is that no one wants to cover maternity through private insurance. I've contacted a handful of companies that administer private insurance here and they all have given me the same info: basically no. Knowing how expensive my husbands insurance is to put me on it, the best thing for us is for me to get private insurance and get myself established and past any sort of waiting periods there may be. There are two private insurance plans that will cover maternity, however they aren't an option either. One is $400 per month and the other is $450, and BOTH have a twelve-month waiting period. A-can't afford either one (if I/we could afford the $400 per month then I'd just be on my husbands insurance) and B-you can shove your damn twelve month waiting period. Granted, that's not forever from now but I'm always worried about the what-if's. What-if we got a surprise before the twelve-months were up? Then what? Also, I don't want some company telling me when I can or cannot choose to do things in my own life.
A gal at my new work, who is a temp like me, happens to be pregnant and told me about this program called Access to Healthcare Network, or AHN. Its not insurance, but a discount program. No co-pays, no invoices or bills, nothing like that. You have to meet income requirements (hey lookey here, I totally meet those now!) and pay a membership fee ($288 for one year) for how long you want to be in the program. Essentially you have a membership-type card instead of insurance cards, and you pay at the time of your visit/exam/procedure and greatly discounted prices. There's no waiting period, no restrictions, nothing that isn't covered. I've been looking into and think that it might be a good option for now. My thyroid is under control right now and I don't have any other issues that I know of LOL, so at least if I had to go to the doctor I know I wouldn't be turned away for not having insurance and I know that I wouldn't get some crazy-ass bill in the mail. The gal at work is using it for her current pregnancy (this is her second kid and she used AHN with her first because her husbands insurance is too expensive for her and her first-born), and she hasn't had any issues or been denied any sort of care.
We'll see. I sent the link and info to my husband to look over so we can make a decision on what we should do. I really hate being up in the air with this and feeling like almost every option there is isn't a viable one for one reason or another. I'm always convinced that the worst thing is going to happen in every situation, so of course I think that during the time I don't have insurance something, ANYTHING is going to happen to me that is totally going to screw us over. All we need right now is to get some couple-thousand dollar hospital bill.
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