News : Health Insurance UK

The other day I finally got around to filling out a bunch of forms which hopefully will result in reimbursement of out-of-pocket medical expenses incurred while waiting for my COBRA benefits to get straightened out from the recent change in insurance carriers my former employer instituted.

Is that a whopper of a sentence, or what?

For awhile there, I thought it was going to be a life sentence because it took two months to get my medical insurance in place at a price I can ill afford. Thanks to the human resources genius at my former place of employment (Pat) for helping me jump through various hoops without an iota of complaint on her part.

Anyway, I have been in the medical field since 1980, but my experience is in hands-on care, and I don’t know jack about insurance except that it makes me break out in hives.

My husband has been in the Medicare loop for a few years and he can go anywhere and have anything whatsoever done to his body without a glitch. I do not care to wish away several years of my life so I can enjoy this benefit, but crikey, I am 55 now and the buzz is that I and my baby-boomer cohorts may never realize the Medicare benefits we have been paying toward since picking up our first paychecks.

Scary stuff. Keeps you awake at night. Will my current benefits pay for the adverse effects of sleep deprivation? Beats me. I have no idea.

Since moving to Florida, a gentleman near and dear to my heart invested a lot of time and effort studying and taking tests so that he can sell insurance in the Sunshine State. I begged him not to get involved in the insurance business in this country.

The days are gone when good old Dick from the neighborhood dropped by my grandmother’s house to collect her insurance payment (small, and in cash), have a cup of coffee and chat about the family.

My loved one soon decided he did not care for the ins and outs of selling insurance for a living, so at the moment he is not doing it. I breathed a sigh of relief when he made the decision to do something less complicated with his life.

I do so worry about folks older and sicker than me with more medications, more physical problems and less income. How do they manage to jump through the necessary hoops and navigate the required red tape to get the medical help they need?

I remember that Hillary Clinton was big on health care reform when her husband was in the White House. How long ago was that, and what are the results? That was at least eight years ago, and if I really wanted to lean on this work for health care reform, I could jack it up to almost 16 years.

Yikes! I don’t see that much has changed except that people like me are experiencing more headaches, more high blood pressure, and higher consumption of things like beer, potato chips and other comfort foods in an effort to feel better when faced with dealing with insurance and health care.

I confess it ticks me off a little when people automatically point the finger at health care as the culprit in the stay-well dilemma of American society. I know there are problems with health care (after all, if I can work in that area, how good can it be?), but I really think the insurance monster should get part of the blame for escalating costs and increasing frustration.

References : http://www.thevillagesdailysun.com