…and I told Mike that when our car registration comes up for renewal, I want the Red Sox license plate GONE. I want either regular plates, or maybe the Spay/Neuter ones instead. I’m sorry, but I can’t give one more dime to the Jimmy Fund, and I’m about to tell you why. It’s under the jump if you are interested, just a warning, it is long, whiney and ranty, ‘k?

WEEI is having their annual Jimmy Fund Radio-thon, and they keep having guests on there who extol the virtues of this charity. It’s actually a fine charity, but I have my own reasons for being angry and resentful about it right now. I had to turn off the game, because I was about to throw something at the radio if I had to hear it for a second longer.

About a month ago, I went for my first ever mammogram. A week after that, I got a call to come to the hospital for a second one…could be nothing, but they wanted to be sure.

This call came about five minutes after the mailman came, bearing a close-to-$1,000 ambulance bill. A few weeks earlier, I did have to call 911 because I thought I was having a heart attack. Turned out my ticker is fine, and that I was having panic attacks due to menopause. These mimic many heart attack symptoms.

I should NEVER have been billed for the ambulance, nor should I have been billed for the cardiac tests and stuff while I was in the hospital. We have health insurance, and I gave the info about that out to both the EMTs and the hospital personnel. Hell, I remember very well refusing to give them my insurance card until I was allowed to call Mike at work to let him know what had happened. The ambulance people could not leave until they got that info from me, in fact, one of the EMTs dialed Mike’s work phone number for me. And then they got to see my insurance card, for all that was worth.

But the thing is, as soon as someone sees that we have CIGNA, they decide to bill US rather than the insurance company. Because Cigna sucks, and does everything possible to get out of paying for ANYTHING. And when they DO pay, it is literally pennies on the dollar of the original bill. No wonder no one wants to bill them, they will always try to bill the patient first, in the hopes of scaring them into sending them more money than Cigna will. We have to fight with them every single time.

Anyhoo, I blew off that second mammogram appointment. First of all, I had no way to get there but on the bus, and even then I’d have to walk a bit. And that day, the rain was beating down like a monsoon. I was so out of it that I didn’t know who to call to cancel, they had called me, and I forgot to get the # from my Caller ID.

Also, they had told me on the phone when I stupidly agreed to this that they would tell me right then and there if they found anything, no waiting. That disturbed me, because I would have been there all alone, they didn’t even give me a chance to call Mike and try to get him to take time off work to be there with me, in the case of bad news. Even if I had my own car to use, and even if it wasn’t monsoon-like rain, HOW in all goodness can they even suggest that a woman in such a case come alone to the appointment, they should have not put me on the spot, they should have given me a number to call them back once I found someone to come with me.

I mean, how can they expect anyone to get around on their own, be it by car or bus, if they get the news that they have breast cancer?

Also, as I mentioned before, our insurance sucks. How much does a mammogram cost, anyway? I found out that it is REQUIRED BY LAW for insurance to pay for one mammogram per year here in MA. But a second one…all bets are off here.

What is even scarier is what would we do if they did find something? I KNOW that Cigna will never in a million, zillion years agree to pay for a good cancer place like Dana-Farber. If I have cancer and opted for treatment, I will no doubt be stuck in the cheapest hellhole of a hospital that anyone can find. I will end up in serious pain and die.

Just like I would do if I just ignored it, which is what I’m opting for right now. At least it’s cheaper and I won’t be incarcerated in some nasty hospital.

The Jimmy Fund, or any other cancer charity I have looked at, will probably NOT help me. Once they see that my husband makes halfway decent money, and that we have insurance, We Are Screwed. But he does NOT make enough money to pay for this sort of treatment. People often ASSume that just because you have insurance, you are good to go. So not true. Plenty of people with insurance end up going bankrupt, being homeless, etc, because of debt due to medical bills.

We are the ones who fall through the cracks of our very-screwed-up health care system. It’s so bad that some people are considering DIVORCE to get things paid for. I won’t lie to you, I have, as well. Mike refuses to consider it, though. I have begged him, but he won’t allow it. I may have to leave him on my own.  And then hope for the best.

Other couples, like Michelle and Marion Moulton, are forced to consider divorce so that an ailing spouse can qualify for affordable insurance.

Ms. Moulton, 46, a homemaker who lives near Seattle with her husband and two children, learned three years ago that she had serious liver damage, a side effect, she believes, of drugs she was once prescribed. She is trying to get on a transplant list, but the clock is ticking; her once slender body has ballooned, and her doctors say her liver could give out at any time.

Mr. Moulton, a self-employed painting contractor, maintains a catastrophic coverage plan for his family, but its high deductibles and unpredictable reimbursements have left them $50,000 in debt. Without better coverage, a transplant could add unthinkable sums.

Two years ago, Ms. Moulton looked into buying more comprehensive coverage through the Washington State Health Insurance Pool, a state-financed program for high-risk patients. She found the premiums unaffordable, but noticed that the state offered subsidies to those with low incomes. As their debts and desperation multiplied, it occurred to Ms. Moulton that divorcing her husband of 17 years would make her eligible for the subsidized coverage.

“I felt like I had done this to us,” she said. “We had worked hard our entire lives, and if this was all the insurance we had, we could become homeless. I just said, ‘You know, we really need to sit down and talk about divorce.’ ”

Mr. Moulton would not consider it — at first. “From a male point of view, you want to be able to fix things, you want to be able to provide,” he said.

“Then you start looking at what things cost and what someone with no assets can get in terms of funding, and you have to start thinking about it.”

The conversations ebbed and flowed with the family’s financial pressures. They talked about the effect on their children and where they might live. They weighed the legal and financial risks against the prospects of bankruptcy.

The debate continued until this summer, when Mr. Moulton’s father offered financial help. “I know we don’t take charity from anyone,” Mr. Moulton told his wife, “but I’m not going to divorce you and I’m not going to let you die.”

Though grateful for the lifeline, the couple remains unsettled by how close they came.

“Nobody should have to make a choice like that,” Ms. Moulton said. “What happened to our country? I don’t remember growing up like this.”

The entire article is here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/13/us/13marriage.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

but they might make you log in. Use bugmenot.com for that.

It’s nice the the Jimmy Fund helps kids, and uninsured adults, but if you have substandard insurance through no fault of your own, you are screwed.  Same with pretty much any other charity I have looked at so far.  We are stuck with Cigna because that is all Mike’s work offers at the moment.  We can’t afford to buy private insurance on our own.  Mike is 56 years old and would like to be able to use his retirement funds to, well, retire.  Not to pay for me to die in some hellhole that Cigna won’t even pay for.  Not to be in crushing debt for the rest of his life.  If I have to dies, I will choose where I die, he can take me up to Maine or someplace nice that we can afford to pay for.  And he can live with it for the rest of his life if he doesn’t push his employers to let us change insurance in October, if he doesn’t tell them what is going on.   The employees in the Rhode Island office get to have better insurance, because no one down there will take  Cigna  (jeez, I wonder WHY?).  So why can’t those in the MA office get the  same?

It has gotten to the point where I have turned off my phone.  Now the hospital is trying to send me certified letters that I have to sign for, but I will not answer the door.  I know what they want, and I can’t communicate with them.  Talking to them about the crappy insurance does no good, they tell me not to worry about it.  The last time I listened to that advice, I ended up with over two grand in bills.  I know better, I’ve done my research.  We just don’t have that kind of money laying around, and it’s a disgrace that we get these bills, being that Mike pays good money for the crappy insurance.

If you don’t believe me, go and rent Michael Moore’s “Sicko”.  My husband is the polar opposite of Moore politically-wise…but I made him go to this movie with me last summer, and he was affected by it, too.  It’s about how people get screwed even if they have insurance.  There was a couple who were battling cancer, THEY HAD INSURANCE, but they lost their home due to high medical bills and had to move in with an adult child of theirs, into a crowded basement.  The adult kids didn’t much want them there, either.

Anyhoo, I can’t donate to a charity that will probably never help me when I need it…unless I divorce my husband and become destitute to qualify for any assistance.  I had to turn the ball game off because it was making me sick to keep hearing about this, and I gather this will be tomorrow, too, so no ball game for me then, too.

I’m scared.  And I want that damned license plate off the car ASAP.  I might just go and order the spay/neuter ones now, just to achieve that.

The day that the Jimmy Fund will help ANYONE with cancer with medical bills, and not just kids and uninsured adults, will be the day they get another dime from me.   These people get enough help from other sources, why am I not worth it?  Why is my life not worth saving?