Like many other countries, both developed and developing, having access to good medical care is very important in US of A. But as a developed country, no less than the numero uno in Super Powers, we are still lacking in our health care choices. The best health care plans are offered through group insurance packages available as the employee of an established company. The better the company, the better the choices and the coverage. For people like Sathiq and I, who have chosen to be self-employed consultants, the choices are very very limited and very very pricey.
We are still covered under COBRA (Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act), which grants us the right to be covered under the group health benefits from Sathiq's last full time employer for a period of 18 months. Thanks to COBRA, we can still avail of the same benefits that we had under our previous plan at the elevated price of 102 percent of the cost to the plan. Which otherwise would have been fully covered by the employer for Sathiq and partially covered for me as his spouse. And trust me this expense stands second only to rent (and we all know about CA rents especially in Silicon Valley), in our list of monthly expenses.
Now another, interesting factor, is pregnancy is considered a "pre-existing condition (?) " if you were "diagnosed" to be pregnant when you contemplate switching your insurance plans. So while being covered under COBRA and you have been offered a much better and maybe cheaper plan, please hold back if you "suffer" from pregnancy as your "condition" will not be covered. In our case, our COBRA will be expiring on Jan 1, 2012. While we are still waiting for Sathiq's full-time offer to come through, I called up the member services to find out my options. The rather nice lady (Cathy), who answered my call gave me 2 options:
1. I can switch to CAL-COBRA - which is a CA specific law which allows us to continue our COBRA benefits for another 18 months (Yay CA!)
OR
2. I can pray and hope that our baby is born in Dec (Jan 1st happens to be our due date as well. I can see that baby already has a sense of humor and will keep us on our toes)
And trust me CA people have a good sense of humor as well. Nice talking to you, Cathy :)
