Health Insurance Woes

Or I am so frazzled with my husband's work changing what insurance coverage we can have again!!

The only choices are to go to a more expensive PPO than we are paying now that has less benefits and higher deductibles (we can't afford the deductibles we have now!), OR to go to a HSA (Heath Savings Account) plan that we can't afford.

Everyone he works with keeps telling my husband that the HSA saves so much money and tries to convince him to do it.  We ran the numbers and compared the last time this was offered and there was just no way to do it.   If we have to pay $4 to $10 thousand before the insurance starts paying why have the insurance at all?

I have chronic health problems.  There is no way around that and it is something I have to live with.  The biggest one is the Type 1 diabetes that I have had for almost 28 years.  I have to see the diabetes doctor quarterly and I have an insulin pump that makes a HUGE difference in controling my diabetes.  Unfortunately my pump is programed by the manufacturer to stop working after 4 years.  Used to be it just wouldn't be under warranty after 4 years but now they've designed them to just stop.  So I will have to get a new one next year (2010).  My first pump was paid for 100% by the insurance.  The last one I got I paid $25 out of pocket for it.  The plan we have right now won't buy a new one at all.  The supplies for the pump are a big expense also. Just in case you are wondering why the insulin pump is important, I went many years without one and had no luck at all with keeping my blood sugars regulated even when I was taking 8 shots a day trying to do it. I went without my pump earlier this year for 6 weeks and was sick almost the entire time. I need my pump.

My husband and son also have different chronic health problems that I won't go into here.

I've read that insurance companies save money in the long run by covering diabetes 100% because it helps keep long term complications from happening and those are much bigger expenses.  The insurance companies and plans we are presented with don't care about this at all.

I'm just frustrated thinking about all this.  We did without healthcare we really needed last year because of the expense even though we were spending the same amount as our house payment on healthcare insurance every month.  It just doesn't make sense and I don't understand why this is so hard.  We have coverage but we can't afford to do anything to take care of our health because of the deductibles and copays.  So that pretty much renders the healthcare coverage useless doesn't it?

I don't know what we are going to do.  My husband is going to go to the insurance dept at work and run the numbers with them to see if what they come up with is different than what we did.

What makes me feel worse is that I know someone who just had open heart surgery and rehab and it was paid for 100% by the government.  She is on disability.  I don't wish her not to have had the surgery but why is that if I needed that I would just have to wistfully say 'oh well' and do without because my insurance if it did approve it would make me pay more than we'd ever have as our share??

I am just frazzled thinking about this and wondering how we are going to survive.