Finding the right health insurance in the US can be quite some challenge. If you are employed by a company and are part of a company group policy you are one of the lucky ones. But if you are self-employed and need to find health insurance that is somehow affordable and covers the whole family, it can become a critical endeavor. Especially if one of the family members happens to have asthma, which is apparently considered a chronic condition, you might run into some problems.
This is at least what I am experiencing at the moment. While everyone else in the family got accepted by the plan I had chosen, my child with asthma got rejected and is still without any insurance. Now, here I go again hitting the on-line road to finding some acceptable insurance that will be okay with the pre-condition of my teenager. My Health Insurance Odyssey is far from over yet, it seems.
The article”Resources for the uninsured” by David Colker in the LA Times of June 21, mentions different options of what to do when being in this dilemma of trying to find a health insurance to cover you. One is apparently the web site of Healthy City, where one can find “…a search-able database of hundreds of organizations that provide various kinds of preventive, dental and eye care at no or low cost.” Check out www.healthycity.org. A child with a chronic condition can either “…stay on group coverage through COBRA, even if your COBRA eligibility has expired or can get coverage through the State Children’s Health Insurance Program”, according to Kathy M. Kristof’s article “Strike quickly to use COBRA”, also in the same edition of the LA Times.
I will be on my way to checking through this jungle of premiums, deductibles, Co-insurance and Out-of-pocket limits, since a teenager walking around without health insurance is a scary thought to me. How much easier it seems to me was it to have health insurance in ‘Good old Germany’. I don’t recall any of these hassles. You had one insurance that covered everything, from preventive care to visits at your dentist and optometrist and no-one was rejected for having a pre-condition.
Here are some more resources on finding the ‘perfect’ health insurance: Check out www.ehealthinsurance.com or some of the county services below:
Los Angeles: www.ladhs.org/wps/portal/Patient ; Orange County: http://egov.ocgov.com/ocgov/Health (click on “Clinics & Hospital Locations”); Riverside County: www.rcrmc.org; San Bernadino County: www.arrowheadmedcenter.org; Ventura County: wwwvchca.org/mc ;
The Partnership for Prescription Assistance program, www.helpingpatients.org , can help find reduced-cost or even free programs to get your medications.
Let’s see what the new health insurance plan by President Obama will have to offer. Hopefully it can make some difference.
