The Saga of Aaron's Insurance
Aaron quit his at Frye last June and picked up a much better paying contract job at Intel, losing his health insurance in the process on July 1st. At the time, we weren't overly concerned about it. He's young and healthy and a non-smoker and has never had any serious health concerns. After pricing out private health insurance plans, we figured his new salary was still a significant pay boost even if you add in that cost.
There's a timer that starts ticking the day you lose your health insurance... 60-63 days after that (depending upon the policy), you are considered "lapsed" and this could impact what illnesses are covered under future health insurance policies, so we knew we had to get moving pretty quickly. Also, the health insurance companies only sign you up for insurance on the 1st and 15th of the month, and since Intel wanted him right away, he wasn't going to make the July 1st date when his Frye insurance ended, so if something happened to him between July 1st and July 15th (assuming he could get insured in time), we'd be screwed. We sent in an application for a private health insurance plan to Providence in late June.
It took them two weeks to process his application. They denied him. Why? Because he had been to the ER three years ago for a kidney infection that was cured with antibiotics and hadn't reoccurred. And some time ago, he had once asked his doctor about back pain. Plus, his wife was getting ready to have a baby. This combination was enough for the insurance company to decide he wasn't a good risk. Of course, they didn't tell us all this. They just said they denied coverage, and we would have to send in a written request in order to find out why... and they would have 15 working days to respond to that request.
Thinking the denial of coverage must have been some sort of mistake, he applied for a second health care plan with ODS. Of course, now he would miss the July 15th date, but could hopefully be insured by August 1st. During the last week of July, ODS notified him that he was denied, stating the kidney thing and the pregnancy thing. Basically, Aaron is uninsurable under private health insurance because there was once something fairly minor wrong with him that was fixed easily. That's how broken our health insurance system is in this country.
Meanwhile, we received a HIPAA notification in the mail from Healthnet about Aaron's eligibility for a "portability plan." Apparently, the HIPAA thing is good for more than annoying forms that health providers ask you to sign all the time. It also gives people who lose their group health insurance the ability to sign up for another plan within 63 days without being susceptible to the "pre-existing" condition thing. (Alternately, he could do a COBRA plan through Frye, but that would be much more expensive, or we could put him on my insurance, but that would be even more expensive.)
After he was denied by ODS, he applied for the Healthnet portability plan, and we finally received news of his acceptance today. In fact, he is retroactively insured as of July 1st, which is handy because he had a little ER visit on the day Desmond was born, courtesy of some fierce broccoli that lodged itself in his esophagus. We're going to send in another form today to add Desmond to his plan, since it's way cheaper than adding him to mine. (Frye has decent insurance for its employees and pays 100%, but adding anyone else is prohibitively expensive.)
Yay for intrusive government forcing Healthnet to take Aaron's money to insure a health adult! Whenever anyone has talked about "pre-existing conditions," I always imagined something big like cancer or heart disease or MS. I didn't know that it meant anything that was ever wrong with you could come back to haunt you. The new health care reform law removes the pre-existing condition thing in 2014. It can't get here soon enough.
There's a timer that starts ticking the day you lose your health insurance... 60-63 days after that (depending upon the policy), you are considered "lapsed" and this could impact what illnesses are covered under future health insurance policies, so we knew we had to get moving pretty quickly. Also, the health insurance companies only sign you up for insurance on the 1st and 15th of the month, and since Intel wanted him right away, he wasn't going to make the July 1st date when his Frye insurance ended, so if something happened to him between July 1st and July 15th (assuming he could get insured in time), we'd be screwed. We sent in an application for a private health insurance plan to Providence in late June.
It took them two weeks to process his application. They denied him. Why? Because he had been to the ER three years ago for a kidney infection that was cured with antibiotics and hadn't reoccurred. And some time ago, he had once asked his doctor about back pain. Plus, his wife was getting ready to have a baby. This combination was enough for the insurance company to decide he wasn't a good risk. Of course, they didn't tell us all this. They just said they denied coverage, and we would have to send in a written request in order to find out why... and they would have 15 working days to respond to that request.
Thinking the denial of coverage must have been some sort of mistake, he applied for a second health care plan with ODS. Of course, now he would miss the July 15th date, but could hopefully be insured by August 1st. During the last week of July, ODS notified him that he was denied, stating the kidney thing and the pregnancy thing. Basically, Aaron is uninsurable under private health insurance because there was once something fairly minor wrong with him that was fixed easily. That's how broken our health insurance system is in this country.
Meanwhile, we received a HIPAA notification in the mail from Healthnet about Aaron's eligibility for a "portability plan." Apparently, the HIPAA thing is good for more than annoying forms that health providers ask you to sign all the time. It also gives people who lose their group health insurance the ability to sign up for another plan within 63 days without being susceptible to the "pre-existing" condition thing. (Alternately, he could do a COBRA plan through Frye, but that would be much more expensive, or we could put him on my insurance, but that would be even more expensive.)
After he was denied by ODS, he applied for the Healthnet portability plan, and we finally received news of his acceptance today. In fact, he is retroactively insured as of July 1st, which is handy because he had a little ER visit on the day Desmond was born, courtesy of some fierce broccoli that lodged itself in his esophagus. We're going to send in another form today to add Desmond to his plan, since it's way cheaper than adding him to mine. (Frye has decent insurance for its employees and pays 100%, but adding anyone else is prohibitively expensive.)
Yay for intrusive government forcing Healthnet to take Aaron's money to insure a health adult! Whenever anyone has talked about "pre-existing conditions," I always imagined something big like cancer or heart disease or MS. I didn't know that it meant anything that was ever wrong with you could come back to haunt you. The new health care reform law removes the pre-existing condition thing in 2014. It can't get here soon enough.