Friday, November 30, 2007
Mento Meditations
I munched on the Mento and a small hard lump started to roll about in my mouth. Bad candy, I thought, and spit it into my hand, only to see the amalgam gleam in the white enamel. Second molar I’ve fractured here in Derby, bookends to my year, and one more little reminder of my mortality. Another trip to the kindly overseas-trained Derby dentist who sets a temporary filling (at no charge). So we go, creaking and cracking and limping into the long slide down from midlife.“Why be upset about it?” Vicki says, “There’s nothing you can do about it. It could be a lot worse!” And she is right. By my age, her father had survived a major heart attack, CHF, and a bypass with experimental ventriculoplasty. It’s “just my idea”, as the Buddhists say, that I should somehow escape the vicissitudes of aging and disease. I wonder that my idea is even more strongly incorrect because I’m a doctor. I have practiced my detachment to the point that I won’t believe disease can happen to me. Especially since I take fairly good care of myself. Oh well, as the t-shirt says, “Eat right, exercise hard, live well, and die anyway…”
Our travel health insurance coverage ends the minute I step back onto U.S. shores next week, so we’ve been trying to figure out how to avoid becoming one of the 50 million or so uninsured U.S. citizens. Health insurance for my new post won’t cover me until January, so there is a month gap. This is not a big worry for little creaks and cracks, but we don’t want to risk suffering a major car crash or slip on the ice without coverage.
I contacted several people who recommended short-term health insurance. These policies are non-renewable beyond 6 or 12 months, and are designed for people between jobs. Just Google the term and tons of sites come up wanting to sell you a policy.
So I gamely spent an hour or two reading about this product on the web, and obtaining various quotes. Its almost as much fun as making airline reservations, there are so many combinations and permutations. First question is where do I live? I guessed I could pick any state I can make an argument for: there would be Iowa, which I left this year; Ohio, location of my mail drop at my parents, or Maine, ultimate destination. I decided to try Maine. Found a nice catastrophic policy at a cheap cost, and started answering questions.
Now it gets a bit dicey. There are “7 questions” one must answer “NO”, or you can’t be issued short-term insurance. Some are obvious- “do you have cancer?” But do I have “degenerative joint disease of the knee?” At first I use my doctor brain, and think, yes, because I had knee surgery for a torn cartilage. But then I rethink it with a consumer’s brain. I fell in the boat and hurt my knee, and after my surgery I walked 53 km over a 1000 meter mountain and back in New Zealand. So I decide I don’t really have DJD, and anyway, I’m not looking to stick the insurance company for a total knee surgery this month. So OK, we answer all the questions “NO”, put in our credit card number and hit the SUBMIT button. (This in itself is pretty scary, as the application obtains birth date, SSN, and enough details for any identity thief to have great fun. I am surprised that there are not a lot of phishing sites set up to collect this information from the unwary.)
Forty-eight hours later, through the miracle of email, my application is REJECTED. No reason given. But my guess is that it’s the MIB in action again! No, not the Men in Black, but the Medical Information Bureau (or some other ethereal insurance data base) which has recommended because of my age and past claims, I am unworthy of insurance at this low, low price.So I stayed up late one night and called Anthem Blue Cross in Maine, to ask about an individual (non-short-term) policy. Maine is one of the few states that require all insurance companies to insure all comers, without exclusions. But it turns out there is a catch- you must live in Maine for 60 days before you are eligible. So no joy with Blue Cross (which by the way would have cost over $1000 for a month of coverage for the two of us, IF we were eligible).
However, the Anthem guy was very helpful and did steer me to another short-term company, Assurant, which has a different set of exclusion questions. So I tried again, and this time was approved for a short-term policy, $1000 personal/$4000 family deductible, 80% copay (up to $10,000), lifetime max of $2 million coverage. This cost $350 for the month. But, God forbid, if we should get hurt, at least we won’t be bankrupted.
As many criticisms as I could make of the Australian health care system after this year, this experience does bring home one major difference in which the Australians are far ahead of the U.S. No one in Australia has to worry that if they have a head injury, or come down with leukemia, or choke on a piece of steak, their life’s savings will disappear into the black hole of healthcare.
This is just crazy. We Americans should tell our congressmen to support The United States National Health Insurance Act (HR676)
Universal Medicare coverage would give every American citizen a “fair go” (as they say here in Oz).
