insurance

My open enrollment period for health insurance is coming to an end tomorrow and of course we waited until last night to even really start talking about what we wanted to do.  The cost of my insurance is going up by a ton in January, my monthly contributions are almost doubling and we will now have a deductible so we're trying to figure out the most cost efficient way of dealing with things.  We decided that my husband can move over to Tricare while he's still in the reserves until the baby is born and then we'll bring both he and the baby onto my insurance.  This will save us a lot on the deductible and lower the annual out-of-pocket maximum for our hospital stay.  He'll be getting out of the Reserves after January and won't be eligible for Tricare anymore so we'll be able to add him after the baby is born, per my HR. 

It looks like I'll have to plan on working after the baby is born so we can continue to have insurance for the time being.  It should work out ok since my 12 weeks will be up just as my husband is finishing school (he'll only have a week or two left depending on when I go on maternity leave) so I'm sure my work will be flexible for a couple weeks if he needs to go to a couple classes during work hours.  I can work from home or take vacation.  This most likely would not last too long since it is very likely that we'll be moving to Oklahoma for a few months around summer anyway, and at that point Hubby will have good Federal govt insurance.

There is a chance that Hubby will get a permanent job with the FAA and be eligible for insurance or he can perhaps move over to the Air Guard since he's getting out of the Reserves and we could get Tricare.  There's even the remote possibility that he could go to Oklahoma for training before May.  I figure that I will plan on taking my maternity leave and returning and if something changes in the meantime we'll deal with that. This stuff is complicated! 

I had dreams about insurance and how the whole health care system needs reformed all night.  Weird huh.  I'm convinced that we need insurance to pay for the really expensive stuff and not for $10 office visits, like liability car insurance.  It would be fantastic if we could have insurance to guarantee that we won't go bankrupt if heaven forbid we get cancer and not to lessen the cost of a cold.  They could still offer free preventive appointments like yearly exams. 

In the case of minor everyday sort of visits we should be able to meet with physicians assistants or the equivalent and if they see something is wrong we can go to a doctor.  This would save us a lot of money and we would have more of them since they don't have to have as much training.  For monthly OB appointments I think it would be fine to see a midwife unless you are high risk.  I do think it would probably be better if most women went the natural route for childbirth, but at the same time I really want an epidural so I'm not sure if they could take that away now that it's available. 

In other news my doctor called and said that I am anemic and need to start taking Vitron C.  This isn't much of a surprise, I've been diagnosed with anemia before and so has my mom.  It does give me some ammo when Hubby and I have the "who's the most tired" contest.  I'll be able to say that I'm clearly the most tired because I'm anemic and I'm pregnant, he can't top that no matter how many hours he spends at school. He'll probably start thinking he's anemic now.  He's the king of sympathy pains.  He gets nauseous almost every morning (funny it's always the days he's going to school, I think he doesn't like his classes this semester) and he started complaining that his ligaments are loose yesterday, this after our conversation about that topic with the doctor on Monday. 

The best news is that my diabetes test turned out normal!  Yay, no follow up horrible test!  What a relief.