Ok, so here's the latest on the Casper Family:
Tammy is working from home, doing some data entry. She has also been interviewed (and possibly hired, pending the results of a drug test) for a second from-home job doing customer service. The data entry work is paid pre-tax (so I get to figure that out, yay!), and doesn't have any insurance benefits. The CS job does have benes, but they don't start for 90 days.
This leaves me in a bind... Zion's offers some of the most ridiculous health care options I've ever heard of (only slightly cheaper than Cobra). For $200-300/month in premiums, we can have somewhere between 25% and 75% coverage on any medical expenses that exceed $5,000-$10,000 in the calendar year. This means we have to pay, minimum, $200 every month to the insurance company in order to guarantee partial coverage of expenses incurred in excess of, again minimum, $5,000. They offer no co-pays. It's all out of pocket until we reach the $5,000 mark. Then they cover a range between 1/4 and 3/4 of our expenses.
My question is this: In what way is this insurance? Other than being able to document "coverage" so that when we get real coverage we can prove that we don't have "pre-existing" conditions, this is hardly insurance at all. It's a scam. I even called Cigna and Aetna to double-check with them that I was reading the benefits chart correctly. The Customer Service people I spoke with were as shocked as I was. They verified I was reading it correctly, but they said they had never heard of such awful plans, and had no idea that their companies were involved in something so terrible.
If I go with Zion's I'm locked into it until next November unless I quit, which is at least a possibility, as I've applied with UTA to become a bus driver (better pay, better insurance, and I'd get to drive around all day). If I don't go with Zions then I really need to hurry up and find another provider till Tammy's benefits kick in at the new job.
On a lighter note:
We went out to dinner tonight at Chili's with my Wife's local family for her brother-in-law's birthday. Cordelia got a little plastic cup of water, pretty tightly sealed, and she brought it home with her. She accidentally dropped it on the livingroom floor as I was closing the door behind us. No big deal, I thought, the cup didn't come open, and only a couple of drops of water escaped (which I didn't even notice, frankly), so I picked up the cup and put it somewhere safe.
As Tammy went to the bathroom to floss some chicken out of her teeth and I was distracted by something else for a minute, Cordy went into the kitchen, retrieved the mop, and brought it to her little spilled droplets. She efficiently missed every one of them, as she pushed the towering mop-handle around without an ounce of dexterity, but with a barge-load of heart and enthusiasm...
I just love that kid.
On a completely unrelated note:
I just posted my first book review to my Once Upon a Time... blog ( http://bookoobooks.blogspot.com ). I don't plan on updating this blog every time I update that blog, but since it's new, I thought it couldn't hurt if I did once or twice.
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We just went through that whole health insurance mess too.
Last month, everyone at Will's work got a memo saying that as of Oct 8th (which was about 10 days ago from when they got the memo) their health plan no longer included vision or dental, and their rates were doubling.
Everyone was mad. We especially were because the day before he got that memo, we had just gone to the optomotrist for contacts and glasses.
And so now they were requiring that we, a small family of 3, pay $600 a month. And that was JUST for Preston and I because Will gets covered 100% by his employer.
There was no question to ask. We dropped the insurance and looked elsewhere. You should look online. We signed up for Regence Blueshield and for a plan that about the same as the one that his employer provided and for half the cost. We now pay $300 a month, and we have $30 copays and it covers basically everything. The downside is we still don't have dental or vision.
Speaking of which, doesn't everything seem to happen right when you aren't covered? About a week after we changed insurances, I bit down on something and broke half of one of my molars off. Luckily we have dentist in our ward and he was able to "patch" up my tooth for only the exam cost ($80) and didn't charge me for xrays or any of the patching. I really need to get a crown though...but that's gotta wait. We are now on a waiting list for dental coverage and it is 2 years.
But....even with all of that. I found out yesterday that Will lost his job. He works for a homebuilder as an estimator in the accounting department. He has been lucky enough over the last year to have retained his job while practically everyone in his department got laid off. But yesterday they finally laid him off. We still haven't decided what we're going to do yet. The real estate/financial market is so hard right now. So it's not like he can just go get another job in his field elsewhere because practically anyone/everyone in that market is jobless right now and if there IS a job opening he is competing with everyone. We thought he would go apply with Microsoft in their accounting dpt, but they just announced they are on a hiring freeze too.
So the field is wide open! Maybe we will go move closer to my parents now. LOL.
The good news is that I have a fulltime babysitter during my piano lessons now. Haha.
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