Isurance is lame. I have learned more about insurance in the last month than I ever wanted to know. I called different providers, asked questions, compared quotes online, learned about different types of insurance and learned vocabulary. And what I’ve learned is that insurance is lame. Terribly lame.
Renter’s Insurance: The only redeeming quality here is that it’s cheap – somewhere around $10-$15 per month. This is insurance that covers the belongings in your apartment. If your apartment burns down or is robbed, the insurance company will give you money to get new items to replace the things you lost. There are two types – one that covers what the item is worth, regardless of depreciation, or what it costs now, and one that covers what it will cost to replace. Also, because no one has an inventory list of everything they own, the agent has to estimate how much insurance to give you. We got $20,000 – and I have no idea if that’s low or high (I suspect low).
Health Insurance: Holy God. If you don’t get insurance through your work, it’s EXPENSIVE. The best deal we found was through LifeWise, where we pay something like $200 or $250 per month for the two of us. Then, if anything happens, we pay differently depending on what it is. Simple things like physical checkups, annual exams, eye exams, etc. are free (to a point). Non-simple things like emergency room visits, ambulances, surgery, etc. are 70% covered, meaning we have to pay only 30% of any given bill – AFTER we pay the $1000 deductable. This means that for the first $1000 of bills for anything like that, it’s not covered at all. Only after we pay the $1000 does the 70% coverage kick in. Oh, and that deductable is per-person – so that’s $1000 of treatement for Annie, and $1000 of treatment for Scott. Prescription Drugs are also 70% covered – but they have a SEPARATE deductable, which is also per-person. So once again, we have to buy $1000 of prescription drugs before coverage kicks in.
Basically, this means that if you’re like me, and haven’t been to the doctor in years for anything major, you’re paying unholy sums of money JUST IN CASE. Oh, and when that JUST IN CASE rolls around, you’ll still have to pay the first $1000.
Dental: I haven’t even started looking into this yet. I haven’t been to the dentist in years, and I’ve never had troubles with my teeth, and I don’t expect that I have any now – but it’s been long enough that I really should be going in. But it’s a whole separate bill, presumably with it’s own deductables and monthly fees.
I’m telling you, if you don’t get insurance through your job, you’re screwed. I never realized how sweet people working at major companies have it, with low monthly payments, and deductables covered by the business and stuff like that. Businesses can afford sweet deals because they’re essentially buying in bulk.
I’m not actually a fan of socialized health care, but the more I have to deal with this, the better it looks.
Now, it gets even better than all of that. Once you finally decipher all the vocabulary and sales-speak, and decide on a plan, you have to apply. The application is online – sweet! But that’s misleading. Turns out that you can fill out the form online, but then you have to print it and mail it in – because you also have to turn in a 30-page health questionnaire with it (that’s 30 pages per person, by the way). Page after page after page of “have you ever been treated for any of the following terrifying conditions in the last few years?”
Well, we did all that, packed it up in a giant manila envelope and mailed it off. Today we got the reply – DENIED.
Turns out they’re holding Annie’s back problems and treatment for depression against us. So now we get to contact her doctors, get them to write us notes explaining that none of these are outstanding issues anymore, they’ve all been treated and dealt with, and then we get to appeal the denial.
The guy on the phone sounded promising that we would get approved if we can show that these medical issues are non-issues, but by now I’m just about fed up. If there was some way around this, I’d jump at it.
Oh, that *is* lame. :p
We have insurance as long as Sig is active, but it will go away as soon as his training is over. Then he has to find a job, and we get to do the whole wait-90-days-or-something-unless-he’s-a-contractor-too-bad thing. Bleh. :p We’ll see how it goes. I’ve applied for the prime insurance with the military, but I haven’t heard anything from them. It would just figure that by the time I’m fully covered, we’ll be without again . . .
Thankfully, because Sig is a service member for at least the next eight years, we have renter’s and auto insurance through USAA, which was a nice break for us, since California requires more on an auto policy than Washington does. Progressive was getting . . . annoying.
Socialized medicine does look good, but then I think about the whole “getting what you pay for”, and all the Canadians coming here for better medical care, and realize that we at least have good medical technology. You just have to be rich or well-employed to take full advantage of it . . .
But now I’m rambling. Good luck! I hope you can appeal that denial!
Yeah, insurance sucks.
We’ve lucked out the last few years with insurance through Molli’s job, then my union job, and now through my current job. But we still don’t have dental, so we’re paying for stuff out of pocket.
Incidentally, if you just need a general checkup and cleaning on your teeth, it’s probably cheaper to just pay for that out of pocket than pay $50 or more a month when you’re not seeing a dentist.
I, on the other hand, am looking into dental because of the “Just in case”. That’s what happens when you have kids.
Once we eventually leave this job (and probably move out East again), it’s going to be fun finding a decent job with benefits. And by that, I mean the fun that isn’t.
If you want to talk unholy sums of money let’s talk $400-$500 dollars a month. Just in case. And that’s after the state pays about $500 first.
To be fair though, we have no deductibles and pretty much everything is covered fully or if it’s not it’s $5-$10.
The socialized health care isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. At least here in Germany. “Socialized” just means you _have_ to have it, you don’t have the option to go without health care. And if you can’t afford it, you’ll get it free or cheaper, but if you can afford it it’s still very expensive.
There’s were protests here not long ago when they overhauled the public health care, which the government couldn’t afford. It used to pay for ridiculous things like the taxi ride to the doctor’s office.
Oh yeah. You can also get private health insurance in Germany, which is what I have. They say it’s cheaper if you’re young and not likely to be unhealthy. So I took that but suspect I may be paying more because, while I am young, I let it slip that I have hemophilia. Some of the companies rejected me, and the one I’m with jacked up the price because of it.
It’s really frustrating, trying to explain that hemophilia A — the one everyone’s heard of — is the bad, serious one, and type B — the one I have — is extremely mild and has never been a problem. At first I thought they weren’t educated about it, but now I think they’re just weasles who take any excuse they can get to jack up the price.
My private insurance costs me (brace yourself) 380 euros ($494) per month. Lukcily my employer pays half of that, so it only costs me 190 euros ($250) per month. But it pays for everything — dental, vision, prescriptions, brain surgery, etc. And apparently, not speaking good German when I first arrived, I signed up for the most comprehensive plan the company had, where I get a private room at the hospital and am guaranteed consultation with the head doctor and other things I’m probably not aware of. (I should really look into saving some money and getting a cheaper plan. But figuring out insurance is hard in English, in German it’d be very difficult for me.)
It still pisses me off that I pay so much every month and barely use it. In two years, I’ve gone to the dentist twice for normal checkup/cleaning, the doctor once, and the dermatologist once. And the weasles at the health insurance company wouldn’t pay for the dermatologist because it was “cosmetic”. In two years, my actual medical bills have been as much as I pay them in a month and a half and the bastards wouldn’t pay for that.
I hate the whole damn insurance insudstry. It’s so tempting to never have any again (well, unless you live in a country where you’re required to have it), but it’d be terrible to suddenly need a kidney transplant and not have any.
Sean, you hit the nail on the head. Which reminds me of a news story recently where I guy’s nail gun backfired and shot a nail into his skull – which he didn’t notice until he went to the dentist for a toothache, whose x-rays showed the nail. After some quick brain surgery, he’s fine – but he has no insurance, so his “headache” cost him $100,000.