One Man's Alaska

Dealing with health insurance

May 25, 2007

I left my last job on May 4th, 2007, and dealing with health insurance since then has been a pain in the rump. I worked for a small company (I was the founder and part-owner, actually), so after leaving COBRA is not an option for small businesses. But, in the state of Kentucky, there is a plan called the Kentucky Continuation Plan, so I've applied for that with my previous health insurance company (who shall go nameless).

In the meantime I also applied for insurance with a few online health insurance companies to see what they have to offer.

In the end the choice came down to two options, either go with the Kentucky Continuation Plan (KCP) with my previous healthcare provider (about $300-400 per month), or go with another plan that was about $150 per month.

The two plans are almost identical, and actually ended up being with the same provider, but the difference is that the KCP would cover my prescriptions (Zyrtec, Patanol, Nasonex, Cartia, Advicor), while the other plan does not.

I decided to go with the KCP, as I don't foresee getting rid of all of those prescriptions immediately, but this brings up a second problem I didn't foresee: paperwork. While I had the $150/month plan in my hands, and all I had to do was say "yes", I went with the other option. When I did that the carrier said "Oh, what you need to do now is fill out a bunch of paperwork, you can't do it online."

In short, I'm an idiot, what a dumb decision.

So now here I am in Alaska, trying to find a place to live, moving from hotel to hotel, and the insurance carrier wants me to fill out a bunch of paperwork -- "no, you can't do it over the internet" -- even though I'm technically still on their plan until May 31st. I've been trying to keep this clean, but, argghhhh...

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