45 yo nurse, became ill, stupidly took Cobra because the HR guy said I had 60 days to switch it to a NYS Marketplace plan. It was during a crisis so I did this. When I was well enough to pick a NYS plan, they told me once you choose Cobra, you are stuck with it until changing from it during open enrollment. Crap, because my insurance, while not great, if you stay within our large healthcare system, it's not too expensive. We excel at many things, I would go there first except for trauma.
And then I found out, they provide barely any neurological care. I had to do everything at the competitor, the Medical Center. Double crap. It was so expensive, I could not begin to pay the cost of a 3 day inpatient test, so the doc ordered a sub-par test that would monitor me outpatient for 24 hours instead. Today I got the bill for that, 4k, for just 24 hrs of EEG monitoring, an ancient test, how could this possibly be 4k? Same day, letter from insurance, their codes allowed 600 whole dollars to be paid for the test. Leaving me with $3,400. Then I noticed I had another letter from my insurance. I have reached the out of pocket maximum, the test will cost me $500! Oh, thank God.
So I immediately left a message for my neurologist, "you can test me every which way at the Medical Center if you do it before 1/1/16!"
no more co-pays, no more mounds of money going for meds. A nice breather until it all starts over on 1/1. I am so intimidated about picking a plan, my memory is all messed up, I don't understand a lot of complicated things and comparing all these plans is definitely complicated for me. They do have people to sit with you and help you. But how do you switch from the devil you know to a cheaper plan when you have no idea what is coming down the pike? It is likely I will need to go to NY and see a researcher at Columbia, do I get a plan banking on that when he may very well be happy with just seeing the biopsies and not examining me? And I am so early in the process that no one knows for sure yet about that and tons of other stuff.
I think I should plan on getting one of the more expensive gold plans. Or stay with what I have, reach the OOP max and be done. I am going to need sedatives to stop thinking about this before open enrollment starts!
All summer my brain believed it was January and when I woke up, it was always Fri. My family had to hide my winter coat or I would put it on and walk out the door where it was 90 degrees! I still kept it on. I forget everything, did I feed the dogs, ten minutes after I did it, I'll have a day of fog and "wake up" at ten pm with zero memory of the day and I have to ask if anyone saw me eat. I can forget all kinds of stupid stuff. But my potential healthcare costs I cannot forget no matter how hard I try, lol!
is anybody good at this? I used to have a working knowledge of deductible and co-insurance and all that nonsense. That knowledge is long gone
