I almost fell out of my chair this morning while doing some research on individual health insurance policies in New York.
St. George's University offers health insurance for their students, but the dependent coverage is expensive, so Liam and I are on an individual plan with Golden Rule in Texas. That plan costs roughly $600 a quarter.
Golden Rule doesn't offer coverage in New York, so I was considering signing up for the school's policy, which would be roughly $600 a month for Liam and I (C.J.'s annual premium is a separate and relatively low $1,500).
Tripling the cost of our monthly health insurance had me in a bit of a panic so I called Golden Rule's sister company in New York. Here's where I almost fell out of my chair. They have two individual plan options. The first one costs $2,221 and the second one costs $3,273 a month.
You read that right, that is the cost PER MONTH.
School insurance isn't looking so bad now.
I expressed some disbelief on the phone to the sales rep. In a sweet and apologetic way, she gave me a "yes, honey, welcome to the big city, you're not in Texas anymore" response.
Should I be laughing or crying right now? It's so scary, it's funny. Almost.
This is not helping my anxiety level.
3 comments:
Sigh... I know the feeling all too well. One of the reasons we left New York. You can't get around spending an arm and a leg for EVERYTHING!
Good luck! Maybe you'll be better at finding bargains than I was :
Oh my gosh this gives me anxiety too. We've been trying to figure out health insurance stuff too lately and it's an absolute nightmare. Good luck! Let me know what you decide to do. We might be in the same boat next year.
Insurance is a daily nightmare for us. We've got the school insurance, which does everything in its power to get out of paying for our care. It doesn't cover well care for adults AT ALL, including the physicals the students are required to have. I had emergency medical stuff and they have given every excuse in the book to get out of paying - they only pay up to $5,000 limit before passing along 20% to the insured, I had "too many tests" on the same day, it's a standard test during pregnancy but I already had my allotted number of those tests, we think you had other insurance at that date of service. No doctor has billed them correctly on the first go around (they always bill UHC instead of Student Resources).
On the other hand, I just had my third visit to the Medicaid office on the same topic of trying to get them to cover what the student insurance doesn't. The result of this visit is a rant that deserves its own novel. Medicaid in Ohio was so much more straightforward and functional than it is here. That is not to say that it was straightforward or totally functional, just that the comparison is shocking. I want public health care, but not to have it function like this!! I look forward to having insurance through work.
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