What the new heath care system did to me.

Tuesday, June 15, 2010 at 9:31pm

The week before I came to Thailand I had to make some big decisions about what to do about my medical insurance, what happened is that the Fire Department where I work has to renew the medical insurance every year by the end of June, I started getting emails and notes in my box at work to fill out new medical insurance applications because they were trying to find a cheaper insurance, I really don't like doing that in the first place because I don't need the whole world to know my business.
What happened next upset me then made me mad, first I was told was that the insurance was going to go up by 30% because of some people in the Department, what I did next I should not have done but I did because I did not think it was me, I asked the person who does this at the table with other people sitting around, was it because of me and she said yes and that we had been blackballed by other insurance company s so there was no chance of going anywhere else, all we could do is stay with the same company and pay 30% more with the deuductable doubled.
We have a small department with about 30 full time employees, young guys with family's who have a hard time now paying the copay, so what was going to happen when it goes up, something has to give.
I should say that the whole reason this is happening is because of the new insurance rules, in the old blue-cross rules nothing that happened to me because of compilation's from GID, hormones or surgery's was not covered, now I am covered and can not be dropped because of preexisting condition's and the way the insurance company is going to make that up is raising the cost.
OK so now everybody in the Department knows that because of me I was going to be taking money out of the pockets of everybody, this was not a good feeling on many levels.
Now what really pissed off the person doing all the work had forgotten from last year was that I had my retired military insurance so I was the only person who this was not going to effect too much but this made her mad because in her eyes I did not even need the department insurance that was now going to cost them so much money.
So what to do, I could do nothing and have both insurances which would probably make every body pissed at me and maybe more, or I could drop the department insurance which would help everybody except me or broker a deal which I did, I don't like it, I think it's wrong that I should have to do that but I think it was the right thing to do, I just hope it works out for everybody.