I'm applying for health insurance for my family after a move.
We have to get private insurance because of my husband's employment. Needless to say, it's expensive, and the benefits suck, but this latest application has sent me into a full on Health Care Reform Freak Out.
I'm answering all the intrusive questions about whether or not I drink, or smoke or smoke pot (that was a new one), when I came upon something that made my hair curl, and not in a good way.
Blue Cross/Blue Shield Anthem wants to know if I might ever have any babies, and if so, they just want me to know in a friendly kind of way that I'll have to pay a monthly extra fee to get maternity benefits.
My reaction was all in capitals: "WHAAAAAT???!!!!"
So I have to pay extra to get maternity benefits? Why don't the insurance companies just come out and say it? They don't want to cover pregnancies! They consider mommies and babies to be a huge pain in the ass and expensive as hell and as such they just want us to go away and leave them alone. Pay for your own babies, for Heaven's sake! Or have them at home, people! It's cheaper! Don't be such a pussy, it will be fine!
As a disclaimer, I'm not having more babies. My husband and I use fourteen forms of birth control, and a pregnancy scare a few years ago had us both bawling on the couch. Three children makes for a wonderful family, and we fully plan to keep it at that. One of our kids is handicapped and it makes our lives full of adventure and hard work. Three is plenty, thank you.
But what if we screw up? As a forty year old woman (well, thirty nine and a half, thanks) who has no plans for more children, but who has not been surgically altered (nor has her husband), do I need to pay some kind of extra fee for the possibility of an "oopsie"?
I am applying for health insurance! When did maternity benefits become an extra benefit?
I have been making calls for the public option, but obviously I need to do more. Now I believe that we need a robust public option with no trigger, but short of that can someone just grab insurance execs by the lapels and shake them without mercy? Can we have some kind of reform that will end the lunacy of what health care has devolved into? Insurance companies seem to want to craft their industry into something that provides nothing except for the occasional well check up and anxiety and/or erectile disfunction drugs!
Okey-dokey, rant over. Thanks for reading.