It may seem strange that Natalie and I had no insurance until 3 days ago. Odd, but true. We had left our jobs in Vermont and subsequently lost our insurance. There's a program, however, that allows you to continue having insurance after you leave a job. Sounds great, right? Well ... it's called COBRA and it's so worthless that you might as well go without it. Which we did.
We were told we could retroactively apply for COBRA (it probably stands for something, but the image of a deadly, treacherous snake seems quite appropriate.) We could not actually purchase COBRA proactively, we were told. We're not sure why. I guess the government has their reasons. Like they don't know what the hell they're doing, for instance. Or maybe it was so incomprehensible that the person explaining it to us had no idea either.
Still, we're glad we didn't have to buy it as it was ridiculously expensive and would have given us mediocre coverage at best. It would have been roughly $1200/month and then would have a $1500 deductible. And then it only paid 70%. So we were, for a time, "self-pay", which means that every medical office that we dealt with wanted payment. Up front.
This became rather amusing. Doctors visits required payment for visits and ultrasounds even before determining whether we needed an ultrasound. We paid our OB bill in advance by credi card to receive a "20% discount". This was slightly less than $3000 and didn't include anesthesia, newborn care or the hospital stay. For 2 physicians this has been a great experience as we now see what lunacy some of our patients have to deal with. Insane.
Now we are less than 24 hours from having a boy or girl. This will be a relief as we still are trying to think of a name. Thankfully, we'll soon be able to throw out half of the list. My favorite name so far? "Suck Chin" - a Korean name for rock-like. There just aren't enough Suck Chins out there, I say.
Just over 21 hours to go ... I'll try to post photos of Suck Chin tomorrow afternoon ...
