COBRA Insurance Is Better Than No Insurance

About a year and a half ago I was making decent money as a car salesman. Things were looking good for my wife and me. We just found out we were expecting our second child, and we just bought our first house.

Apparently, the company I worked for had been in trouble for a while but no one except the boss knew it. Revenue had been dropping for several months, but the staff was unaware of the problem. The first sign of trouble came when the boss started making some spending cuts around the office: no more free coffee; no company cars for the salesmen; different type of light bulbs around the building; different supplies in the restrooms. The boss finally told us about the problems and told us that even with the spending cuts the bottom line was still in trouble. He said instead of laying off employees, he would cut back on work hours for office and sales staff and his managers would have a choice of a pay cut, reduced hours or leaving the company. One manager chose to leave, and he wasn't replaced.

This problem went on for about a four months. One day the boss told us instead of laying off employees, he had no choice but to cancel health insurance for all of us. This was bad news for me because my wife was five months pregnant. Without that insurance, we would have some pretty expensive bills to pay for prenatal care and hospital bills for the delivery. One option for us was COBRA insurance where we pay the full premium to keep the insurance going. Another option was to find another job where the insurance coverage was from an HMO because HMOs cover pre-existing conditions. One way or the other I had to have insurance coverage for my family.

I wasn't able to find another job, so I had to buy the COBRA insurance, which cost us over $450 a month to cover the whole family. At first my wife and I were only going to cover the pregnancy, but since the COBRA didn't cover my wife for anything but the pregnancy and the rest of the family had no insurance, we were concerned. What if one of us got sick or injured and needed to go to the hospital? We really struggled each month to pay that $450 bill, but by cutting back on some unnecessary expenses, restructuring our spending and using credit cards, we managed.

We made a wise choice in buying the COBRA insurance for the whole family. I ended up in the emergency room with an injury and my son got sick and we had to admit him to the hospital where he stayed for a few nights. If we had to pay those hospital bills, we would have ended up paying many times more than what the COBRA cost us for four months. Instead, we only had to pay a co-payment each time and the insurance paid for everything else.

The car dealership still doesn't offer health insurance, so we got the coverage my wife's company offers. We would like it if my wife could stay home with our two children. We could live off my income if she was to baby-sit some extra children, but we can't be without her heath insurance coverage.