Thursday, August 10, 2006

Stupid Blogger, stupid insurance

Many, many things swirling through my brain today. Had finally settled down a little and started a post on breastfeeding. Then Blogger ate it when I tried to save a draft. And I just don't have the energy to recreate it right now. Argh!

Tomorrow I will be spending my morning at the doc-in-the-box. The boy's cough remains deep, there has been an additional incident of vomiting, and his eyes are getting goopy. The goop always means we've moved into an infection.

And that throws me back into the mess that is universal healthcare insurance here. To be fair, I very much approve of the idea of everyone having access to health care without the concern of affording it. But it just doesn't meet my idealistic expectations. Sure, the visit to the doctor itself ends up being free, no co-pay. But prescriptions still cost, less than in the US, but it still adds up. Most employers offer supplementary care that often takes care of this, maybe some dental, and a little physical therapy, but that part is wholly dependent on one's job. An additional limitation for us is that our insurance is private insurance through the university; while it officially matches provincial coverage, most providers won't take it. Or at least they won't submit the paperwork for us, and we will need to pay them up front and wait for reimbursement, if we can submit the paperwork with everything filled out properly and the correct signatures (sound familiar?). So we feel rather restricted to the list of providers who have agreed to handle the private insurance. And the list is completely devoid of any child-specific providers, so we're left with doc-in-the-box and the long waits in waiting rooms full of even sicker people (though they did hustle us back immediately the time we brought our son in with pink eye).

Our longer term plan is to find a family doctor who will handle us all, suck up the payments, and then make sure we know how to do the paperwork. Or convince the provider's office to handle the paperwork for us. It could happen. They are Canadian, after all, and not nearly as rude as most places I've been south of the border.

2 comments:

Bea said...

I always like me a post about breastfeeding (there have been two wonderful posts about weaning lately, one at Penelopeto and the other at Her Bad Mother). I hope you restart yours. (I always write my posts in MSWord and then copy and paste. Never trust Blogger.)

Mouse said...

I keep almost writing it, and then something else comes up. It does remain on my to-do list. I figure that since my son has been weaned for a couple years now, it's not the most pressing item.