I'll be honest: I've spent a lot of time and energy criticizing the Affordable Care Act, now commonly known as ObamaCare. To my thinking, there's still plenty in there to complain about, far too many giveaways to private insurance, nowhere near enough controls on premium prices.
But today I come to the eating of the crow portion of my post, and ask that someone pass the salt and the hot-sauce to help it go down a little easier.
You see, I'm holding in my hand today a letter from the New Mexico Federal High Risk Insurance Pool telling me that for the first time in over eight years, in a few short weeks (April 1st), I shall once again have health insurance. And at a premium rate I can actually afford.
(Update: And holy crap -- thank you for my very first appearance ever on the Wrecklist.)
(2nd update: Thanks again for the great comments & the honor of being on the Rec List, it's deeply appreciated. I have, as has been requested by a few, forwarded an edited copy of this post over to the main Whitehouse.gov ACA website. For now, it's off to dinner with my wife, who was shocked in her own reading of DKos today to see an extraordinarily familiar story...before noticing the handle of the person who'd written it. She's on Medicare, but is as glad as I am that I will finally have insurance coverage again after so long without it.)
(Continued after the magical orange squiggle...)
A little background: I'm a small business owner. Very small: Just me and my wife, who operate a technical consulting business. For quite a few years, it was just me, until our accountant advised us of the tax benefits of opening a LLC partnership.
Getting private insurance didn't used to be impossible. But throughout the 90s and early 00's, it became more and more difficult. Because much of my work was involved with technical writing, I joined a professional group through which I was able to get reasonably priced if modest group health insurance. Wasn't bad really -- HealthNet insurance saw me through a major flare-up of RSIs when I stupidly took on way more work than I could handle.
Then came the letter. The entire organization was being dropped by its carrier, and we all were literally -- without transitional coverage or COBRA or anything -- thrown over to the private insurance market. They helpfully gave us links and names to apply to.
I was turned down for the pre-existing conditions of migraine headaches and seasonal allergies. I applied to a whole bunch of insurance companies, and the result was the same. Oh, I had another option, living in California as we did at the time. State law said that due to the rejections I was eligible for the CA high risk pool. Rate quoted for the lousiest policy, in 2004? $650/month. To equal the coverage that had been terminated, I would have had to pay $1200/month.
From that point on, I joined the ranks of the perpetually uninsured.
From 2006 to 2009, I lived and studied spirituality abroad, spending most of that time in India. There, I had no "healthcare anxiety" at all because it is insanely cheap over there, and for excellent care and top-name brand medicines when required. My wife suffered a torn retina while we were in-country, and the total cost for her treatments (and I mean TOTAL) cost was roughly $39US. The hired cars to get us to Bangalore cost more than that.
Then, upon our return to the U.S., I was back to having no coverage. I applied once again to a New Mexico insurance company, just to see if anything had changed, but it hadn't -- I was rejected again. For the same reasons.
Then came ACA. Initially, I couldn't apply because we hadn't really been back long enough to get our tax situation in order...and honestly, I felt the unsubsidized premium rates were too high for us to afford.
Plus, and here's the part where I own up to my own mistakes: I procrastinated. And my wife, goddess love her, was having trouble filing our 2010 taxes because we're trying to figure out how to keep our much tinier business going without the aid of an expensive accountant. After many extensions, she finally got the questions answered, filed the paperwork and gave me the essential 1040 that attested I really didn't make very much that year. (Plus, due to the fact the Feds do not recognize our marriage, I only have to declare 50% of what our company earned.)
I did want to get this done now though, because if I waited until April to apply, we'd have to use our 2011 tax forms, and that'd take a while longer... anyway.
So, I swallowed my pride and anger, went ahead and applied to Presbyterian Insurance a few weeks ago. It was with some amusement I opened the return letter from them saying that they were rejecting me... once again for migraines and allergies.
(For fuck's sake, pardon the language, but we are talking two conditions both of which are easily treatable with modest prescription medications. Hell, 95% of the time, I handle them with OTC meds, and just need the 'scrips for when things get bad. Imitrex or something like that for the ultra-bad migraines, and perhaps a month or two of Flonase when the spring allergies really kick up.)
I let that percolate for a bit... then headed over to the New Mexico insurance website, began collecting the forms to apply to the high-risk pool.
I do have to say though, the forms are really lengthy and burdensome, and it cost me a buck and a half to mail the thick manila envelope.
And thus I come to the crow-eating portion of my post: Yesterday I received a thick priority mail envelope containing my enrollment information to the New Mexico Federal High Risk Insurance Pool. The card is supposed to arrive in a few days. The book listing all the participating healthcare providers is comfortingly as thick as a phone book. For the first time in most of a decade, I'm seeing coverage claim forms and mail-in prescription benefits.
My eyes actually teared over a bit.
It's not the best insurance in the world -- there's a $2k deductible, but that does make me eligible for a healthcare savings account, which these days is no longer "use it or lose it" but instead rolls over and can essentially turn into a kind of long-term retirement account. But because my income was so low (50% of what is actually enough to get by halfway decently here in NM), I qualified for the full 75% premium support.
Which means my insurance costs me a grand total of $93/month. Even looking at the numbers, if my business does much better this year and I don't qualify for the full support, it's still within the realm of affordablility.
And for the first time in eight years, I'm not afraid of getting sick, having an accident, or having to undergo some medical procedure that would be guaranteed to leave my wife penniless and bankrupt.
If this is ObamaCare, then thank you President Obama.