Insurance Nightmare

Many years ago when we first moved to Florida, my husband got a job working for a grocery store making about $300 a week, and I got an office job making about the same amount of money. While I was working at that job, I got pregnant, and after the baby was born I got laid off. My income went mostly to after-school care for our oldest child and all-day care for an infant, as well as gas and lunch money for me to go to work. We examined our finances and realized if I could baby-sit a couple of kids every day and if my husband could get a part-time job, we could make up the money we were losing because I lost my job and I could stay home with our children. I was going to stay home with the kids during the summer and then get a new job when school started again.

Then two things happened in the wrong order that changed everything. First, I got pregnant again (and that was OK) and about three months later the grocery store where my husband worked was bought out by another food chain. We lost the health insurance that covered the pregnancy! The new company didn't offer an HMO insurance plan. If they did, my pregnancy would have been covered and all would have been fine. Instead, none of the plans they offered would cover my pregnancy because it was a pre-existing condition.

In order to have insurance coverage for my pregnancy, we had to pay the COBRA payment from his old plan. That cost us $250 for the remaining six months of my pregnancy. My husband also had to purchased the family plan package from the new insurance company (at $60 a month) so that when the baby was born, we would all have health insurance coverage.

That $250 was as hard to come up with every month as if it had been $2,500. My husbands second job only gave him 20 hours a week, and he worked very early in the morning so that he could be flexible with his schedule with the grocery store. After caring for my children as well as two other children during the day, even if I could get a job at a fast food restaurant or a convenience store at night, when my husband got home from work, I was too tired leave the house and go to a job. Regardless, no place would hire me because I was pregnant. It was an insurance nightmare.

We had to borrow the money from family members every month so we could make the COBRA payment. Our parents and siblings gave us anywhere from $10-$40 each month, and that was a blessing. We owed everyone a total of $1,500 after the baby was born, but at least we were all covered by my husbands new insurance plan. It took us a long time to pay everyone back because I didn't go back to work until my baby was a year old.

If my pregnancy had been covered by an HMO insurance plan or the new insurance plans that were offered didn't exclude pre-existing conditions for new customers, then we would have been OK financially. But back when I was pregnant with my third child, my husband and I only had two options to cover those doctors and hospital bills: pay all of the medical bills ourselves in the end or pay a COBRA payment every month.