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Comment by mushbino | Hacker News Reader

Not just if you have money. If you have a lot of money. The majority of the country is one major accident away from being completely wiped out. It's the number one cause of bankruptcy.

I had an emergency this year within a very tiny insurance gap between employers and now all of my savings and retirement are gone.

I'm really not sure who it works out better for versus universal healthcare, but I can't imagine it's a whole lot.

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You weren’t able to use COBRA? Or was the coverage just very poor even with it?

My probably naive understanding was that COBRA can be activated retroactively if you get in an accident during the coverage gap.

I don't know about poster, but offering COBRA isn't required for companies below a certain size. (I had to unexpectedly obtain private insurance to cover a gap in the pre-Obamacare era because the co I worked for only had a few employees.) It is a qualifying event for using the exchanges, but no idea about that being retroactive.

That shit is so expensive. I think I paid nearly $800 a month for a good short term policy during my gap.

COBRA is fuxking expensive. I have no desire to pay for it again on a low salary.

Sigh. This isn't your fault. But COBRA is retroactive. EG. You have 60 days to find new insurance with a new employer. So you don't have to ever pay for COBRA. IF / when something happens - you pay all the missed bills and you are covered. That is the entire point of COBRA. People paying for COBRA are using it wrong or can't find employment in 60 days.

> So you don't have to ever pay for COBRA.

Not technically true when I used it last. I did have to pay for it.

"Employers may require individuals to pay for COBRA continuation coverage. Premiums cannot exceed the full cost of coverage, plus a 2 percent administration charge." But yes, the American Rescue Plan act allocated funds to make COBRA free. I wouldn't doubt that I was using cobra wrong at the time either prior to the passage of the act. Small pdf warning: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https:/...

Yeah, I tried all of that. I'll spare you the details, but things just lined up in a way that made me ineligible for COBRA, but the insurance that I had at my previous employer was absolute trash and they wouldn't have covered a single thing anyway. It was the only option given aside from Kaiser (my Kaiser saga is an even longer story), and even before this emergency it covered almost nothing.

My prescriptions seemed kind of high so I checked with GoodRx and they were cheaper! Cheaper without insurance than with, like how does that even make sense?

Right now I'm trying to negotiate on my last and only unpaid bill, the hospital won't negotiate with 1st parties so I've been trying to go through a newer company called Goodbill or something. I can't vouch for them yet as it's still in process, but just trying to get this all out of the way so I can just move on. Honestly, this whole thing has been so terrible that I'm just like, nope you're not even going in the worry pile. I'll go through the motions, pay it as best I can, and move on. I'll save the worry for the next totally normal work meeting coming up :)

I'm just very fortunate that I don't have a family to support or a mortgage to pay, even though I've been very close to breaking my lease and moving in with my parents until I can get back on my feet. I mean, I make good money too, I never thought I'd be in this situation.

I will absolutely go through the insurance options with a fine toothed comb when I interview again. Mama mía, aye yay yay

> hospital won't negotiate with 1st parties

Talk to an FCRA lawyer. There are certain notices that if you send them and they are ignored can let you remove the lines from your credit report should they mark them as defaulted on. They will likely also help if the hospital chooses to sue.

I very much appreciate the tip, I'll check that out. Thank you! It's amazing how much time and work I've put into this and more info just keeps coming up. Crazy thing for people to navigate.

Fun Fact: COBRA coverage doesn’t exist when your startup shuts down and you’re laid off.

This did not stop my insurance company from cashing my premium payments for over three months, even though they silently canceled my policy (no email, mail, or phone call). I only learned I had no coverage when I actually tried to have a dental appointment. Refunds of these premium payments took another another 3 months to be returned!

Was retroactively electing cobra not an option for some reason?

Longer story, but the timing of the emergency and recovery period fell within an ineligibility window for COBRA. My previous insurance company wouldn't have covered it anyway. It was the worst Blue Shield plan that I didn't even know could be legal. Also, I got the first few bills, was like okay, I'll just pay these off and move on and not even bother. These were the only bills I could find in their patient portal at the time. Then I got hit with the massive ones that made my head spin. By that time I had started at my new employer, my new insurance hadn't kicked in and I was outside of the COBRA window, not that it would have covered it anyway.

From now on I'm making sure I have good insurance, which requires a crazy amount of due diligence, but not something I'll take for granted anymore. It's one of reasons I'm currently trying to move to another country. Quality of healthcare is important, but how much does it matter if you're in massive debt, lost nearly everything, and don't have a retirement anymore?

What ineligibility window are you talking about?

You have 60 days to file (in writing by mail, in my case) once you leave your previous job, I didn't have enough time between jobs to really need it, emergency happens + a few weeks of recovery time where I'm incapable of basically doing anything, I get a few bills, I pay them, start working at my new job, get more and much larger bills, now I'm ineligible for Cobra. Not that it would have mattered with that insurer anyway in my case.

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