boomka's Journal: about medical insurance and life as a graduate student

hm I said I'd post about how medical insurance companies are bad, but I realized I could just copy/paste an email that I wrote to my professor a bit ago. Here goes:

as we discussed, here is the situation I am in regarding the medical insurance. Penn Student Insurance Plan (PSIP) for 2004-2005 costs $8207 for a family with a child, as can be seen from this webpage at Student Health Services: http://www.vpul.upenn.edu/shs/PSIP0405vs0304_1.html

Last year our insurance for me and Valida cost $4,435 of which the university paid my part of $1,880, so I had to pay $2,555 myself. If I assume that this year university will still pay my part of the insurance, I will have to pay $6135 myself in 2004-2005. This is quite a bit of money (511$ per month) considering that my paycheck is $1708 per month (including per diem) and that I am already in debt from last year (mostly because I had to replace a decrepit car and because of the insurance payment).
I did try to avoid this expensive PSIP option by applying for cheaper medical insurance plan from UNICARE for Valida and Maria. However, none of the individual insurance plans that I researched cover pre-existing conditions, so when it became obvious that Maria was not going to recover by August 31 I had to cancel the Unicare application and add Maria and Valida to my Penn insurance plan. Otherwise none of the expenses for treatment of pertussis or its complications would be covered. So that's that.

More information about Penn insurance is available here: http://www.vpul.upenn.edu/shs/shi.html

The other part of my saga was about Maria's coverage from August 8 to August 31. Newborns are automatically covered for 31 day after they are born (so untill August 8 in Maria's case), after which they have to be added to the parent's plan for the remaining term (untill August 31) by filing an application.
I called Penn Insurance office sometime around July 15th and they faxed me the forms to Fermilab which I filled out and mailed back to the Penn insurance office and thought that it's all done and gone. However when I called on August 20th to notify about a hospital admission I found out that the mail has been lost and Maria wasn't insured. The people at Penn's office actually tried to be helpful about this, they were able to look at the fax log and find the log of them faxing the forms to me. They also found a recording of my original phone call where I requested the forms and listened to it. They said that the guy on the phone told me to fax the forms back. Since I mailed them instead and didn't keep a copy of them they cannot verify that I actually did anything so the mistake cannot be fixed.
The person from Penn insurance office who worked with me on this situation said she can verify this story if it's necessary.
She also told me I should say to the hospital stuff that I cannot pay the bill and to apply for financial assistance, which is what I am in the process of doing and will complete the application as soon as I receive all the medical bills. The financial advisor at the hospital said it is very likely that I will be approved and then either state or the hospital itself will cover the expenses.

That is about it. And I really do appreciate very much that you are trying to help, even if you won't be able to do anything in the end.

By the way, my professor (who is totally cool) was actually able to do something, at least at this point I think my medical insurance will be paid in full somehow. Guess there's always hope if you try. :)