The Insurance companies are money grubbing (bad words)!!!

The other day I went to fill my prescription of Prevacid at Target. It was an average thing that I do every month or two. I was embarrassed to find myself crying at the counter when the pharmacist reluctantly told me that my insurance refused (again) to cover the prescription. After a few sleepless pain ridden nights I could not stand the thought that I would have to live with the pain while the insurance company quarrelled with my doctor over how much I really needed these pills.

Late last year I had yet another endoscopy. A procedure that along with being invasive and requiring anesthesia costs dan and I anywhere from $300 to $500. It confirmed that I still have a stomach covered in ulcers. They biopsy them every time they scope me to make sure that none of the masses are cancerous. I have been very lucky that none of the results have come back positive.

The gastroenterologist's answer to fixing my insane heartburn and ulcers always comes back to take Previcid. To a certain extent I don't mind, because I feel better when taking Prevacid. But when the insurance decides not to cover it, I am left writhing in pain with no recourse but drinking almost an entire bottle of Maalox just to get through the night. The insurance company goes through honeymoon phases with certain drugs and after those are over they drop the drug. If the drug company courts the insurance company enough they will start covering the drug again. The problem is that there is no alternative to this drug that the company does cover in the meantime. Prilosec of course is over the counter and the insurances answer is to tell us to go out and spend a fortune buying up that drug.

The difference is that Prilosec is 20 mg and Prevacid is 30 mg. So I've been taking two Prilosec a day to make up for my lack of Prevacid (I should be taking four, two in the morning and two at night, but that seems like so many pills). I can survive this way, but it doesn't fix my stomach like Prevacid. I've been taking Prevacid my entire married life, six years. I've tried every other stomach ulcer medicine out there and Prevacid makes my life normal again.

Now I'm aware that I sound like a baby, but I am so sick of insurance companies deciding what I do and don't need. They are not the ones drinking Maalox every fifteen minutes just to get a staggered five minutes of sleep intermittently throughout the night. It is not fair that they can do this to me. I pay over $400 a month to have a health care plan that won't cover the most basic of my health needs, and that doesn't cover dental either.

On top of that it costs Dan and I over $4000 to have a baby. And we don't like to go into debt even for children. So we save up and pay in advance and they graciously take 10% off the total amount due the hospital. On the other hand I have a sister in law who missed one payment due on the balance from her son born four months before my daughter at the same hospital. Because she missed one payment she got 50% of her bill forgiven if she paid the remaining balance.

There is something wrong with this system. I know universal healthcare is a sore nerve amongst a large group of people (including my parents, they believe two of my aunts died prematurely in Canada because of socialized healthcare). But the system is broken. Something needs to be done. Preventative healthcare saves lives and money, if everyone had access to the preventative healthcare they need the majority of the country would be better off.

If I die of a bleeding ulcer then I want someone to point out that they should have just covered my darn prevacid.