Insurance, Inshmurance

Today I had my meeting with the insurance lady. She explained the ins and outs of life insurance, which is far more complex than I ever imagined. Basically, you can do a cheap version called term life insurance, but they really encourage this other kind which becomes like a line of credit you can borrow from at any time. This is very appealing to me due to the insecure nature of my job – I like having low-interest places to borrow money from. However, in doing the numbers the only way to have a nice cash stash to borrow from is to pay a super high premium (like, $300 a month). For a shmoe like me who can only afford $100 or so tops a month, I can maybe have $10,000 at my disposal ten to twenty years from now. Not so exciting. Still, they recommend doing a combo of term and this other thing who’s name escapes me now (and I can’t get up to check the paperwork because the baby is asleep on the Brest Friend pillow that’s around my waist and…well…you know how that is). So I will likely set myself up with a $400,000 policy so that in the event that I croak l’il RT will at least be able to pay off the house and have some left over. I don’t know what the heck I’m doing tying myself down to still more monthly payments, but I just know if I don’t do it now I never will. And I do want him to be protected since, after all, he has only me.

Any attempt at lowering my health insurance costs of course failed. I can save on the premiums but then leave myself hanging if ever one of us needs prescription drugs or runs up expenses meeting a large deductible…and if I ever have baby #2, this scenario will happen. I can’t imagine the luxury of having an NHS that just covers you no matter what. Sure, you have to wait, and sure, the care isn’t up to US standards (so I’m told). But at least you have FREE health care and you don’t have to be utterly destitute to get it. I never was for national health in my more conservative days, but age has made me more, not less, liberal. If every other freaking country in the world can have some form of national health care, why can’t we? At least people like me – single mothers who make some, but not a lot, of money, would have something to fall back on. I was watching a Dateline or 20/20 on my DVR about the “new poor” – people who were middle class but are now going to food banks, etc, just to get by – and there was one similar thread in all of these families’ stories: crippling medical bills, that caused them to lose homes, savings, everything. People in other countries must look on stories like these with horror. It’s just so utterly wrong. I mean, here I am thinking about having a second child, and the number one reason I would pass on the idea is because I can’t afford a second baby’s $300 + a month cost for health insurance.  How screwed up is that?

Well, at least I know that Kaiser is, in fact, the best deal in town, so I am not (for all intents and purposes) being ripped off. And I was reminded that once Bumpus turns two his premium will drop dramatically, AND Healthy Families is still on the table until I get a “no” from them. I just have to accept that things are going to be kind of expensive for a while. Oh well, I guess all the money I’m saving from not eating out, traveling, or shopping at Anthropologie (not on the sale rack) has to go somewhere, right?