Health Insurance Woes Which Could Be Worse

It has been a long time since I've had a very bad day, the kind of day where morning phone calls and money worries seep across the whole day and poison it.  Yesterday was that day--and I'll admit that it could have been much worse.  There is a happy-ish ending, which makes the feel of poisoning even more difficult, because I feel like I shouldn't be feeling so bad.

My day started out well.  I wrote a poem, and then I wrote a blog post that thought about goals and how I might do more poem writing in 2023.  I wrote e-mails to the charitable organizations asking to be removed from the monthly automatic donations that I had set up back when I was fully employed and had more resources.

I went to the online site to check my credit card record to make sure I had contacted all the charitable organizations, and I noticed that my monthly health insurance premium had jumped from $22.20 a month to $752.16 a month.  So I spent an hour on the phone trying to get that sorted out.  

The good news:  because I called before Jan. 15, I had options.  I switched us from a gold to a bronze plan.  Because of our experience in the past 5 months, with doctor's visits that I thought were covered but we still ended up with a bill, I knew that I didn't want to pay hundreds of dollars more for that plan.

I am still not sure what the bronze plan will and will not cover, but the monthly premium is zero dollars.  Later in the morning, I had a video call with my spouse, and we both ended up depressed.  I wish I could say that I was happy to have caught the increased premium price and felt lucky to have made the phone calls when there was still time to make changes.  I did feel lucky, but I also felt sad and frustrated to be spending so much time on these issues--and money.

In the past year, we've had several different health insurance plans, and even though we've often spent over $1,000 a month on the premium, even though we paid the deductible, we still had thousands of dollars of medical bills last year.  And then you add the co-pays, and the cost of health care really begins to mount.  When I went to the physical therapist after my wrist surgery, I had to pay $45.00 for each visit.  Without health insurance, the physical therapy session would have cost $80.00--it's some savings, but not much.

A few hours later, I had a video call with my spouse, and this topic brought him down.  Then he opened some mail, looking for a doctor's bill that had come in.  Along the way, he opened some year-end statements for our various investments.  Like much of middle class America, our accounts have lost money in the past year.

We ended the call with both of us feeling depressed, like we can't get ahead or even tread water.  In some ways, it's ridiculous to feel that way.  We have resources, we have a very small house that is paid for even though it needs improvements, we want to think that we will/would have some employment options in the future if/when we decide to go that way.

I tried various ways of self-soothing (a walk, some tea, some candy), but it took the whole afternoon for my funk to lift.  By the early evening, I decided I needed some light viewing, so I cued up the latest Sandra Bullock movie, The Lost City.  What fun, with some laugh out loud parts and some adventure and a bit of sadness as the main character says a final goodbye to her dead husband.

Today I want to have a better day, with more writing and more quilt creating.  I want to take 2 walks.  I want to feel better while I'm walking--I've felt SO tired when walking the last few days, and I do wonder if I'm not fighting off some sort of bug.  I'm going to start some bread dough.  I plan to roast some vegetables.  I plan to do the kind of self-care that may keep me from needing to utilize my health insurance.