Last Christmas my brother Justin's little boy got bacterial meningitis, and was in and out of the hospital. Their hospital bills- atrocious. While talking to my brother on the phone, he said, "I don't care what you do, or how much it costs; but you need to get some sort of insurance." Had they not had insurance, the road ahead of them would have been a VERY long and rough one.
Months went by. I kept having this nagging feeling that we needed to get insurance. I kept crunching the numbers and just couldn't see how it was going to work. Insurance for a low deductible $500 even $1000-$1500 for a family of six was anywhere from $800-$1000 bucks a month. (Remember we're self employed.) We didn't get it. It was too much.
When we decided that we were going to have a baby, I told Kurt that there was no way that we were getting pregnant without insurance. Months went by and we were still without insurance. I kept having this feeling that we needed to get it and stop putting it off.
So we finally did. We got what we call catastrophic insurance. Basically a higher than flip deductible to get the premium down to where we could afford it. But if anything catastrophic happened, we'd at least have something. AND our catastrophic insurance didn't cover any maternity or pre-natal visits. We were on our own to cover the cost of baby.
Well, baby came and along with him came an extremely high hospital bill. Catastrophic? No. But catastrophic enough to meet our flippin high deductible, Yes.
How grateful we are that we got that insurance. Our road would have definitely been long and rough.
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When asked what hospital I wanted to deliver at, my first choice was shot down as I was told that that hospital wasn't in my insurance network and that if i wanted to deliver there then I would have to pay more out of pocket. (Of course-stupid insurance with the flippin high deductible. Why would I think that I could pick where I wanted to deliver. Silly me.) I reluctantly went with the other hospital that was in my network.
Lo and behold they were the only hospital in my area that had a NICU on site. (I just figured that all hospitals had a NICU-nope.) And when Finn was born, we needed that NICU.
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Since Finn has been born, he has been seen by several different doctors countless numbers of time in the four short months that he's been on this earth. And he will continue to have countless numbers of doctor visits. Because we met our deductible all of his visits have been covered thus far, and will continue to be covered until the new year. How grateful I am that we got that insurance. There is no way-NO WAY we would have been able to do what we've done this far without that insurance. It is sad to think that if we didn't have insurance, we very well could have been facing choices as to what problems we could afford to address with Finn and what problems we would have had to let go unattended due to financial difficulties.
I give credit to my brother, who inspired or not, put the bug in our ear to get insurance as we were just planning on paying out of pocket for Finn's birth (not expecting any complications). I also give credit to the Man upstairs who knows and knew what we needed. That flippin high catastrophic insurance-a flippin' life saver!
4 comments:
Courts med bills have been over 2 million. Without health insurance, we would be screwed. When I was looking for a job out of school, number 1 importance was health insurance. I would argue its more important than a car, housing, saving, you name it.
Another important thing at the top of the list, life insurance. It's cheap and too dangerous to live without it. If something bad comes up and u don't have it, u will never qualify. Get it ASAP.
2 mil! whoa! And life ins. check ;) got it!
We have the catastrophic insurance as well. So much more worth it--we never go to the doctor, so it reeally is only for catastrophies! We pay a much lower monthly amount, and I would say we have only paid 200$ this year in any kind of bills. If that. Love it.
Glad to know you are loving your sweet angel. He is beautiful!
What a blessing to have some kind of insurance! We would not be able to afford anything unless we had insurance since my husband is a Type 1 diabetic.
My sister knows exactly how you feel . . . she has a the same insurance since they are ranchers in Idaho.
Bless everything that you had it, that the insurance had a hospital that also had a NICU and bless everything that the deductibles are met.
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