Insurance AGAIN…

Shopping

I swear I have other things that I’d rather be doing. You know, living my life, taking a huge dump, jerking off, drilling my own teeth, (although Dr. F would probably be pissed off if I did that.) In short, I’d rather be doing ANYTHING and I mean any fucking thing aside from dealing with trying to sort out the insurance bullshit again.

Yet here I am, dealing with web sites Cigna (for example) that has incorrect information published about which providers currently take their insurance. Yep, they say my Doctor is accepting the Cigna plans, but turns out Cigna only offers HMO policies in Orange County and my Doctor doesn’t actually take any HMO patients from Cigna.

So who do I believe?

You know who I believe? I believe the lady that handles the billing and money.

Which leads me back to the bullshit of shopping policies. Anthem Blue Cross is right the fuck out. They’ve already screwed me for a year.

As it turns out Blue Shield actually offers a real PPO to people like me, and that PPO has no regional limits. However THEY demand a bunch of information before you even get a chance to ask them IF they sell private policies at all. 

They wanted to know how much money I was making BEFORE they would even let me talk to an agent. I pulled a number out of my ass. Then I’m talking to an agent that tells me I should go to Covered California, get a number of some kind, and then we’ll talk because I’m eligible for a subsidy based on the number I just pulled out of my ass.

This agent was all excited to tell me that I was eligible for a subsidy and something inside me twisted. That subsidy money is taxpayer money and honestly the unsubsidized premium wasn’t all that bad.  She was all excited about my getting money from other taxpayers to pay for my insurance.

Is it me??? Am I the only person that has a problem with this?

Pragmatically, she’s right in telling me not to leave money on the table that can effectively halve my premiums. But there is something so inherently wrong with this that I can’t wrap my head around it.

This is SOCIALISM, plain & simple. I’m greedy, I’d love to have someone pay my premiums for me, but I can’t help but think this is wrong. 

SO what to do? Follow my ethics and pay full pop even thought I can’t really afford it, or sign up on the exchange and get a subsidy even though I fundamentally disagree with the whole system. 

If I go for the subsidy, does that make me a sell out?