I’d like to apologize in advance if this is your first time reading.  But also?  This happens sometimes, so you’ve been warned (the first time I typed, “you’ve been whined” and I almost left it because, dude, truer words have never ever been spoken).

I’m freaking out just a little.  And it’s a rather ironic freak out.  You see, I posted yesterday about meeting Valerie Jarrett and discussing health care reform and today I am freaking out about my health and health care.  Life is just SO damned funny sometimes.

So, we just moved back to California in June and I joined my husband’s health insurance (because I can’t buy a non-work or school associated policy to save my life…literally.  Apparently screwed up brain is a pre-existing condition.  Who knew?) and it’s fine.

Except, his hospital, the one that the insurance is through, is 30 miles from where we live and 60 miles from where I go to school.  The school that I’ll be at from 8 to 5, five days a week.  Well, okay, Tuesday and Thursday it’s actually 7:30 to 4:30, but still.  My school holidays are few and far between and most of them are on the same days that any doctor’s office would be closed.

Which leaves me in a big mother freaking pickle.  I can’t go to a doctor.  Namely, I can’t go to a neurologist, and I kind of need to have access to one because, I’m not sure if you know this, but I’m kind of a train wreck.  As it stands, there’s just almost no way I can see a doctor with my school hours, but it is a complete impossibility with my school hours and my doctor being a minimum of an hour drive (without traffic, which happens about as often as pigs fly out of my ass) away.

On the other hand of this mess, is that my grad school is forcing me to buy their insurance policy.  Because my private insurance has to cover all hospitals in Los Angeles and my plan only covers 20% of outside hospitals/doctor’s visits, so soon I’ll have double! the! insurance!  To the tune of an extra 1500 bucks a year.  Because I SO have that kind of money.  And I’m still screwed.

I know it seems weird that double insurance would leave me screwed, but just give me a minute to explain.  So Slappy’s insurance gets me all tests and prescriptions with very minimal out of pocket costs.  Considering that in the last two years I’ve spent approximately $12,000 in health costs (outside of my insurance premium), it’s really REALLY necessary that I have low deductibles and co-pays.

However, my school insurance has astronomical out-of-pocket expenses.  MRIs will hardly be covered, prescriptions will be expensive and a trip to the neurologist will require a referral, possibly every time I need to go.  So see, I have GREAT coverage at a hospital I can’t ever go to, and I have lousy coverage at the hospital I’ll be spending every day for the next 3 years at.

Oh, the fucking irony.

And more than anything else, I’m just sad about this.  I shouldn’t have to jump through these hoops.  Normal people can use a school based insurance without issue.  They don’t need to have an uber-specialist nearby at all times.  They don’t need to plan for the times they’ll have to call their doctor at their wit’s ends, willing to try anything to make. the. pain. stop.

I just wish that this didn’t have to be that difficult.  It shouldn’t be this difficult.  And I know I don’t have it the worst, of course.  But I’m 26 years old and I feel like the rest of my life is doomed to this same routine.  This same reliance on doctors, the same inability to live independent of health care providers and the need for prescription medication at the drop of a hat.

Yes, I want the insurance to work out, but more, I want it to not have to.

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