Insurance

You had better believe that I am going to be evaluating the next presidential candidates health insurance proposals very carefully.

One, I am of the decidedly European belief that good health care is a right for all people, not just a select few. To me this is part of God's mandate to care for the needy and less fortunate.

Two, it seems crazy to me that a health care system is governed by profit. I mean all other public safety services (school, police, social services, fire fighters etc.) are not profit driven.

Anyway, I am warning you that the rest of this post is a total rant and I will not be the least bit offended if you don't read it. This rant today because I am dealing with stupid insurance stuff that is stressing me out (because of course it involves money).

Today I received about 5 different letters/statements from our insurance company - supposedly they contain the information about what is covered and not covered from the hospital stay and birth of Nathaniel. I thought that it should be pretty straightforward as I knew what our deductibles and out-of-pocket totals were supposed to be. I mean, we have already paid our total yearly out of pocket amount so why am I told to pay for the anesthesia?

But it is not straightforward.

Trying to understand these statements is like trying to decipher some kind of obscure code. It really makes no sense to me. And of course when I call the 800 number I get some person who is not really excited about trying to explain it clearly in "laymans terms", she uses a tone of voice that implies that I don't have a single working brain cell in my head, and so after 20 minutes of conversation I am almost more confused than I was before.

I feel like they are trying to make it difficult so that I will just give up and pay them whatever they say I should pay.

Oh, and here is the real kicker. I got a statement with charges from Jeremiah's immunizations in 2005! The statement says that I have to pay the pediatrician because the bill was not sent to the insurance company within the 12 months of service. What? It's been 2 years and I had never seen this bill and now I am suddenly supposed to know where it came from and to just go ahead and pay it. You have got to be kidding me!

This stuff makes me so mad because most of the time our family doesn't even meet it's yearly deductible and out of pocket expenses. We pay an arm and a leg for health insurance and because we are healthy we never use it. We go year after year quietly paying our premiums and not costing our insurance company anything in claims.

This year we have a baby and WHAMO! It's like the insurance company (because it is profit driven) does everything to milk every single penny they can out of us. Last month they sent me a bill that I had already paid. Did they think I wouldn't notice and would pay them again? It's so wrong!

This kind of stuff stresses me out!