Healthcare

When I resigned from my job in February to stay home with Will, I gave up my group plan coverage, assuming it would be no big deal for generally healthy people like my son, my husband, and me to acquire a new plan with Blue Cross Blue Shield of Utah or some other reputable company.

Then, the research began. Faced with a plethora of options (and yes, sometimes too many options cloud the question at hand), I started to try to figure out which plans would work best for my family. Maternity coverage, baby wellness visits, prescription drug coverage and the ability to have occasional doctors' visits included - that's all we wanted. Needless to say, it was so overwhelming that I ended up contacting a very nice insurance agent who has done his best to help us in our quest for healthcare.

Instead of choosing one plan for all three of us, which would've been astronomically expensive, we ended up with three seperate plans - an indemnity plan to help out with any future maternity costs, a plan with maternity coverage for me, and a simple, basic medical plan for Spence and Will. So, the applying began.

I don't want to go into the ugly details, but no single step of this application process could in any universe, be it parallel, perpendicular, oblique or otherwise, be described as "easy," "simple," or even "not as bad as I thought it would be." To date, I'm sick - but not with a physical ailment. That would be too fitting. I'm mentally and emotionally sick of notebooks filled with phone numbers, addresses, fax numbers, and random, scrawled, half-legible notes about who to call and where to send more paperwork. I'm aching with the burden of loose papers floating around my house covered in healthcare jargon and other legal and medical gobbledegook. I feel vomitous (a real word, I promise you) when I think about the fact that easily confused, mysteriously created numerical codes describe in such short space and nonexistent detail my family's medical history. I'm nauseated when I consider the fact that docters, hospitals and insurance companies feel no obligation to check up on patients with each other or to verify that medical information is correct and even current! I get nosebleeds from lying awake at night, fearful of disease, illness, accidents, and even just age. But most of all, I get depressed when I think that strangers who know nothing about me and care nothing for me and my family decide whether or not we get coverage and when we get to have another baby.

I've long thought that healthcare, like Social Security, should be set up as a savings account plan. I have no problem paying premiums that would go into a personalized health care account which I then draw from when I use medical services. I'm tired of a system in which I am required to pay for other people's medical issues (particularly those related to personal choices, such as alcohol, drug use, obesity and general stupidity) in order to be covered. I'm not uncharitable - I promise you that - but people need to be responsible in the way that I'm responsible and take care of myself and my family and my needs. I could go on - ranting and raving and pulling my eyelashes out. But I'll stop. I'll save the destructive nature of American federal welfare for another post.

By the way, I've always suspected that this is true, but this experience has taught me unequivocally that I'm no longer a person with a name. I'm Case # 510xxxx. I've been effectively and ruthlessly reduced to a confused conglomeration of numerical medical codes, Social Security number, and BCBS case number.

Anyway, I don't agree with President Obama's healthcare plan. At all. But at this rate, it may be the only way our healthy little family of three is going to have healthcare any time soon. ARGH!