After fighting so hard to find affordable health insurance, we ended up canceling it. This may sound crazy, but I can explain. The short answer is that the insurance policy wasn’t anywhere near as “affordable” as it first appeared to be.
When my husband and I first started trying to find health insurance, it was for specific reasons. We had concerns that if something serious happened to either one of us, that we would end up losing our home. The fear was that the medical bills that would come from having cancer, or from recovering from a serious injury, would push us into bankruptcy. We were of the impression that health insurance could protect us from this potential tragedy.
We also were hoping that having health insurance would mean that we would be able to save some money on the medical bills that come from annual checkups, the medications we use, and doctor visits that would come from things like catching the flu.
I find it frustrating that a person cannot know, for certain, exactly what a particular health insurance plan will cover until after they have already been approved for the policy. The insurer we got our health insurance from sent us booklets that were supposed to give information about what was covered. Except, of course, that it didn’t.
I ended up making several phone calls to try and track down information. To make a long story short, I learned that our health insurance doesn’t cover many of the things that I needed it to. It doesn’t cover maternity, and it also refuses to cover the cost of birth control. It won’t cover the entire cost of a checkup from my dentist, because my dentist isn’t a “Participating Provider”.
The most disturbing thing I learned was that this insurer had “loopholes” in place that would force consumers to pay for things that really should be free, because they are preventative care. I’m not sure how this could possibly be legal, considering the laws that have been passed regarding health care reform.
If you get a mammogram, that would be free. Unless, the mammogram showed that you had cancer. In that case, the phone rep from my insurance company explained, the mammogram wouldn’t be “preventative care”, and so I would get charged for that. You know, on top of whatever it refuses to cover regarding cancer treatment.
This would be on top of the fees we knew about. In addition to paying out of pocket for all the stuff the insurer refuses to cover, we would still be paying the monthly premium, the deductible, and co-pays to doctors. Overall, I came to the conclusion that having this health insurance policy would actually make the cost of our health care more expensive than it would be to obtain without having health insurance.
So, today, my husband called the insurance company, and cancelled the policy. When you cancel a health insurance policy, you have to send something to the insurer in writing that states that you want to cancel your policy. The good news is that we called to cancel a few days before the insurance would have kicked in. As such, this particular insurance company won’t be getting one cent of our hard earned money.
Image by Eric Jusino on Flickr