After a long struggle, I finally found affordable health insurance. The policy went into affect in April of this year. Now, at the end of June, is the first time I’ve had reason to use it. The bad news is that I am sick enough to require a doctor. The good news is that I have health insurance coverage to help me pay for the cost of getting well.
It is rather amazing how different life is when I have health insurance coverage. Today is a perfect example of this. I’d been feeling sick for the past four or five days. I’d been running a fever, and my allergy medication wasn’t making me feel any better. This usually indicates that I have a sinus infection, and that I should see a doctor, so I can be prescribed antibiotics to help me get well again.
When this happened during the years when I was uninsured, I would put off going to see a doctor until there was absolutely no other option. My hope was always that if I could just get enough rest, perhaps I could fight off the infection, and not have to figure out how to pay a medical bill that I couldn’t easily afford. This meant that I was suffering through weeks of sinus pain, pressure, and fevers, before I would make a doctor’s appointment. It also meant that I was going to work while contagious.
Now, I have health insurance coverage. Instead of waiting weeks after realizing that I was sick, I made a doctor’s appointment after only about four days of misery. My doctor is in my health insurance company’s network. (I checked that immediately after applying for the insurance). Today, I was able to hand my shiny new insurance card to the receptionist for the first time since the policy took affect.
There was an immediate difference in the cost. My health insurance requires a co-pay, and a deductible. Unfortunately, since I’d never used the insurance before, I had no idea what that amount should be. The receptionist billed the entire cost of the visit to my insurer, and said that if anything came back she would send me a bill later. My doctor said we caught this sinus infection “just in time”.
I paid nothing today, while I am sick. Previous visits to the same doctor’s office, while uninsured, cost me between $50.00 and $100.00, which I had to pay before I left the office. I had to put it onto a credit card. The pharmacy my prescription went to also looked at my new health insurance card. The antibiotic that cost me around $50.00 when I was uninsured now cost around $7.00. This is a big difference!
Image by Guttorm Flatabø on Flickr