Annoying, Zen.

I hate the whole medical co-pay/high deductible crap. I miss the old days of HMOs that would actually cover everything.

It is amazing how being officially appreciated makes me feel. I keep opening and rereading the e-mail. To me, it was just work - a lot and a challenge - but my job. I have a perma-smile today.

Which helps because today I'm at the stables, finalizing volunteer assignments for 125 volunteers for our event tomorrow. It has been raining and snowing with more due in tomorrow, so we are hustling to rearrange the event to get everything inside which is a big change. We will manage but everyone is stressed and I'm sitting here with a goofy smile as I plug away on my computer.

Well, if you look at it that way, you've saved yourself a bunch of money in previous years.

Fair enough! Although this is the only job I've ever had so many choices of plans.

See also the $900 ultrasound they did at my last mammogram.

Good lord! Next time, come to my place - the ultrasound was only $300, so you'd still be ahead, even with airfare.

I miss the old days of HMOs that would actually cover everything.

Saaaame. I have extra cognitive dissonance because I'm going to the original HMO I had as a kid (I mean the same building), but of course everything in the world of insurance is very different now.

(I didn't mean to be flippant, of course -- a $650 expense you weren't planning for is No Fun.)

No, it's true. And I know most people have much higher medical expenses than I do! I was lulled into a false sense of security.

That's so great, Suzi!

Not so great, Jesse. Deductibles, bah. That all (everyone's examples) still sound like preventative care to me, although I guess not routine preventive, but still! It's all pretty fucked up.

Well, you know, if it had been cancer, that would have been the first step in treating it. I'm almost rethinking my stance that free preventive care is great (thanks, Obama!) because it's the people with stuff wrong who need the benefits more!

I don't know, my insurance kind of screws me over regarding annual wellness visits and ongoing psychiatric care when it doesn't exceed the deductible, but on the other hand I've only had to pay a fraction of hospitalization costs. I'd rather get dinged for a few hundred dollars every year in a predictable fashion than for thousands in unexpected emergencies.

That's the idea of the high deductible insurance, that it''ll be there when you get hit with something really expensive and won't have to go bankrupt, but meanwhile you have to be able to afford the deductible. I think last time i had one of those I also had some kind of HSA that the employer matched paycheck deductions into up to a certain amount and that was meant to cover the deductible. Which worked pretty well. But I don't think that's the norm, people go with high deductible insurance because it brings their premiums down and then have to come up with the money to cover the deductible for stuff that falls in between.

I really just don't think people should have to pay for necessary mnediacl treatments, when you get right down to it. Public good.

Maybe almost relatedly, I definitely do not have my desk ergonomically adjusted right now. In shoving the elliptical under there I readjusted a bunch of stuff and I can already feel it in my shoulders and back.

Hubby and I used to play "How soon in the year will we meet the deductible?" One year it was the second week of January. We cheered ourselves up with how pissed the accountants must be when he went in for expensive MRIs late in the year that were fully covered.