The Way Things Are



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I know I have touched
2005-08-09, 1:38 p.m.

I know I have touched on our health insurance situation before, and now we are going to revisit the topic. I know, bully for you, getting to listen to something as juicy, scintillating, and might I say (yes, I might) wildly scandalous and downright interesting as somebody else�s health insurance.

But you see, it turns out I am uninsurable. I am high risk. I have been rejected by Blue Cross Blue Shield. Never fear, right? Just keep the old insurance policy in place, right? Oh ho! No! You don�t live in my house, do you? Because if you did, you would know that my husband canceled our old policy effective several months back BEFORE NEW COVERAGE WAS PLACED.

I�ll never have private insurance again. I�ve been REJECTED and that really does go on your permanent record. I can either (1) find a new job, one that offers benefits such as group insurance and retirement or (2) join a little party that we like to call the Texas Health Insurance Risk Pool. Or (3) which is to just trust and have enough faith and pray and blah blah blah and not get any insurance. This is guess who�s plan�? DW, that�s who! Isn�t he smart? Or not?

I�m a bit, uh, steamed today. Steamed like a bright red lobster. Steamed like a stalk of limp, khaki-colored broccoli. Steamed like a silk wedding gown in a Mexican resort hotel room. Steamed like a San Antonio sidewalk after an August afternoon rain shower.

And yes, I blame my husband. Of course I do. He�s been fucking with our insurance coverage from Day 1. He can�t stand it. It�s a scam. None of us are going to get sick. We don�t need it. We pay money into something that we get nothing from. So I proved him wrong by beating him bloody with a sharp stick, all the while screaming �WHO NEEDS MOTHERFUCKING INSURANCE NOW, YOU PROVINCIAL BUFFOON?�

And other than screaming obscenities in all caps in an imaginary conversation with my unwitting husband (at first I wrote �soulmate� but I�m mad enough that I just couldn�t let that stand), I�m pretty much at a loss for words.

Well, not quite at a loss for words, because I�m getting ready to spill a few here.

Here�s the thing: DW has this idea that we are soulmates like Bill and Monica. God has brung us together, and let no man or health insurance quandary rent us asunder. And I think he can�t quite fathom that I don�t agree with him on the insurance thing. And he seems to believe that if he goes on and on and on on on and on (the beat don't stop until the gravy's on), I�ll finally agree with him.

And here�s the second thing: I am not going to agree with him. I know that young, healthy folks, and men, stupid meeennnnn can get away without insurance for a while, because life�s bumps, bruises and broken bones sticking out through the skin can be dealt with outside of insurance, and hospitals are usually quite happy to set up payment plans with the uninsured.

But here�s the third thing: my overwhelming fear of cancer. And my knowledge that there are different courses that can be taken when dealing with this disease, and my fear that if I don�t have insurance, and don�t have a way of paying for the services of various specialists and treatments, that I won�t get the kind of care that makes the difference between living and dying young, leaving behind a pretty corpse.

So here�s the fourth thing: I am going to do what I know is the right thing for me, and the right thing for my son, who surely doesn�t want to bury my pretty, pretty corpse any time in the next 40 or so years, unless it�s absolutely inevitable. DW be damned. BE DAMNED, I SAY! :::shakes fist at the ceiling:::

And the right thing is, despite my husband�s protestations and preaching, is (double is!) to join that party they have up at the State Capitol, the high risk pool, whose slogan surely is �Jump On In � We�ll Catch Ya�, and let the marital chips fall where they may.

It�s not just a financial thing: it�s a philosophical parting of the ways. He doesn�t want insurance for himself, and I�m not going to make him get it. If he gets sick or hurt, we�ll get him some baseline of care, but I�m not going bankrupt or losing my house over it. That�s how he wants it. He figures if it�s his time to go, let�s get it on. I don�t have that philosophy. I figure the good Lord gives us the tools and the free will, and it�s all ours to make of it what we do.

Health insurance is one of the tools within my grasp, and I will make use of it.

Ironically, in DW�s attempt to control our escalating health insurance costs, he has caused us to go from $175 per month for the three of us, to $270 for Lil Guy and myself.

Oh by the way: BCBS is just fine and dandy with covering Lil Guy, so he gets his own little kid policy. And irony of irony? BCBS is the provider for the high risk pool. So they are going to take me one way or another, by gum.

And that�s finally all I have to say about that.

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