Insured

With the last few clicks I just made, our family is now insured for the next month and a half. We got caught in a nasty little health insurance loophole, which was making Dave and I pretty nervous. Uncle H-- provided our family's health insurance for the past 3 years in China. But as Dave is no longer employed with Uncle H--, we are no longer insured. Technically, Dave's on payroll through the end of March, and so we are currently covered.

With most jobs, this would not be a problem. Dave begins work as a State Department employee on March 28th, so the health coverage ought to overlap and keep us healthy. However, our government bureaucracy does not operate so smoothly. Dave will sign up for health insurance sometime during the first week of work, and that coverage will begin once the company has completed all of the paperwork. This coverage is not retroactive.

Most employees can use COBRA for the intermediate time period, and be safe from financial and medical disaster. But as Dave's been insured and employed from China, COBRA doesn't cover us.

The next option is to sign up for Short-Term Catastrophic health insurance. We could pay a few hundred dollars for a high deductible and the process that a car wreck wouldn't bankrupt our family. But no insurance company would accept our family, because we are in the process of adopting. No matter that we will not receive Mei Mei while under their policy - the promise that we could made us too high risk to be insured.

We looked into travel insurance, but that's only available to non-U.S. citizens. You may not know, but only a fool or a poor person would dare enter the United States without travel insurance.

We began to worry that we would have to go without insurance for the next month - a dare which seemed to risky to accept. Then Dave got in touch with an health insurance broker, who found something specifically for repatriating citizens. For $240 a month, our family is covered after the first $25,000 - that is, $5,000 per person. Its a steep cost for peace of mind, but at least we ought not end up bankrupted over an accident in the next month.

The confirmation of health insurance was a big Phew! moment. Other moments of relief today - when we drove our new mini-van off the lot; Dave and I are now the proud owners of a Honda Odyssey. I printed directly from my computer today. I accessed Facebook and Blogger.com from my iPad today. We signed our lease in D.C. today, receiving our new address and home phone number. And we took steps toward securing new SIM cards, thereby making our mobile phones accessible in the U.S. Unfortunately, this process is moving slower than we would like. Still, its a good list for one day.

Makes me feel alright about going to bed at 9:30pm. That, and having been up with Annika from 2:00am until 5 this morning.