Sunday, October 3, 2010

This jacked up economy

"Jacked up" is not the phrase I wish to use, but I'll try and pull back on my cursing for a moment.

Here's the deal: I have all of my family on my health insurance which is "provided" by my employer. "Provided" is a real misnomer because I pay over $1,100 a MONTH on health insurance. Seriously. I work in order to have insurance. My husband is retired, we have one child in college, one a senior in high school and our youngest is a freshman in high school. I provide the insurance. I can't just up and quit because of the insurance. So, we've decided to get creative and find ways to cut back on it. I've looked into actually PROVIDING it ourselves, and the cost is barely less, if at all. Our children are legally supposed to be provided insurance by my ex husband, but based on his not having insurance in the past and telling me that he did, and us being told at the Dr.'s office that my children weren't insured, I've begun carrying them myself in order to make sure they are covered. He now promises me he does indeed have them covered, and he'll send me the card. I will believe it when I see it, and then I'll call the carrier daily to check that they are insured. Problem is, if I take them off of mine, I cannot add them back for any reason for a year. We have the little window called "open enrollment" in October, and if you take them off, they are off until the next "open enrollment" comes around. Same with our daughter, who does have a biological mother who is IN MY OPINION the sorriest excuse for a human being I've ever seen in my life. Ever since my husband and I married 11 years ago, and combined our families, she has been a pain in the ass. When they divorced, she didn't want custody of her only child who was only 6 years old at the time. So, my husband had sole custody. They made some deal so that she didn't pay child support. The ONLY obligation she had was to provide health insurance for her child. Which she did VERY grudgingly, and with constant bitching. Now that the child is 19, she is no longer covered under her mother's plan because on her 18th birthday, her "mother" cancelled her. Therefore, I do carry her, because I am not a piece of shit. My husband's retirement health plan was expensive, so we put him on mine. If you have one dependent, it's the same as 20 on my plan. So, I added him. Therefore, we pay a King's Ransom in health insurance premiums every single month. It's criminal.
We are going to try and fix it, but let's face it...the options are severely limited.
I am in a craptastic mood as a result. This is all I have for now. I hate insurance companies.

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