Health Care Issues Hitting Home

First, it's the Pookie's 2 month birthday! Things are finally feeling pretty good from my perspective, I hope he feels the same. I'll write more about how we are doing later, but I don't know how long my internet connection will last right now. So this will probably be short. Instead of complaining about the cable company and/or my lame computer, I will touch on my frustration with my insurance company.

When the Pumpkin was born, I had registered for the hospital online before her birth, even receiving a confirmation email. Of course, after she was born, they didn't have my registration information. And the couple of times they came by my recovery room to get the insurance information, Londo was out of the room getting food or something. Londo had the insurance card, and I was in the new mother overwhelmed stage.

The hospital ended up sending the full bill to a collection company instead of following up with us for the insurance information. Because we weren't busy or feeling crazy with our first brand new baby. When I was finally feeling coherent enough to deal with it, I figured out what had happened by talking with a very nice and helpful guy at the collection company. He was instrumental in helping me figure out why the insurance wasn't charged and how to get it run through the insurance. We had to send in a check for the amount of the birth (crazy expensive!!!), but we got reimbursed by the insurance company. Eventually.

This time, I made sure they had our registration and insurance information ahead of time. I didn't want to go through all that again. But of course it didn't go smoothly. Just this morning I had to call the insurance to find out why they weren't covering all of the anesthesia costs that they should be covering. It turns out that the claims for anesthesia were submitted incorrectly. They were submitted as a hospital visit, not under maternity. Huh? Whatever. They are going to resubmit them and pay more on them.

But that got me wondering about the doctor's charges (separate from the anesthesia charge) that we paid as we left the hospital (again to avoid having to deal with all we went through before). I'm guessing that those claims were submitted wrong, too. I am now going to have to call the insurance company again to check the doctor's claims too.

Is this their job? To submit claims correctly? To double check that the claims are correct? To cover our medical bills with as little hassle as possible? Isn't this why we and my company pay so much each month to them? We don't have the money to keep paying out of pocket things they should be covering!

I'm so frustrated, and I'm a little busy taking care of my newborn. Isn't insurance great? Urg!

Question of the Week - Luxury You Can't Live Without

There is a joke that's been handed down in my family. A one-liner, really. My mom's dad used to say it about her, and now my parents say it about me and my sister. "She's an expensive filly to keep in the stable!" Luckily, I find it funny, not demeaning. I also know it to be true.

My family was by no means wealthy when I was growing up. I certainly have had my share of lean years by myself and with my hubby. In fact, our first year living together, while I was in grad school and he was supporting us with some low-paying job, we lived on Raman noodles, struggled to make ends meet, and really had no money for any extras. I think our biggest splurge at the time was basic cable.

But we've worked out way up, and now we have a very comfortable live. We tend to be house poor (and now child poor, too), but we have a really nice house and most of the household conveniences we could want.

We are both very lucky and work very hard. Not everyone out there is as lucky as we are, and not everyone has two partners who work at well-paying jobs. Not everyone has, wants or needs the luxuries that we have.

I wonder about when we have more children, because kids are expensive! Will we still be able to keep our family living in the style to which we have become accustom? Will this filly still be able to keep her stable as nice as it currently is? Will I have to give something up?

Which brings us to this week's Question of the Week:
What household luxury could you not live without?

I'm going to exclude electricity and running water, since our society, communities and households are not built around those as fundamentals (I make this assumption, but feel free to correct me if this isn't true about you internetters reading my blog).

For me, it honestly is the cleaning service who come every other week. I'd rather give up my cable, heck even my TV, my internet (easy to say for me, since I am online all day at work), my AC, even my dishwasher. But my wonderful, thorough cleaning people? Not on your life! I don't have the time and energy to clean after working 40 hours or more a week, plus I'd rather spend that time with my daughter. The dust and cat dander build-up wrecks havoc on my allergies, and doing the cleaning myself means makes my allergies worse. I could go back to nagging my husband all the time, but that was not good for our marriage.

So I need the house clean, I can't do it myself, and I don't want to add a strain onto my marriage. The cleaning service stays!

How about you? What would you fight to keep, even at the cost of all the other luxuries?

Our New Childcare Situation

As I mentioned before, we are changing our childcare situation. My mom has been watching my daughter and my sister's daughter in the mornings (a babysitter comes in the afternoon), but Mom needs a break and requested that we find something else. My sister's daughter will start at a great-sounding daycare in mid-June. Londo and I, however, have not had time to find the right daycare* for the Pumpkin, so we needed to figure out what to do for now.

I'm happy to say, we've figure it out. We asked our babysitter to be a full-time nanny through the summer. We offered what we thought we might possibly be able to afford as a salaried rate. She countered with another amount, and we agreed. We can't exactly afford this, but Londo and I decided that it is worth dipping into our savings to have her for the summer.

We are going ahead for a few reasons. First, the babysitter is so great with our daughter, and we think that the Pumpkin would really benefit from some one-on-one care from the babysitter. Also, this gives Londo and I time to look into daycares that we could start in the fall. In addition, my mom needs a change as soon as possible, and this was the quickest solution we could come up with. It also will be such a relief to be able to just leave from the house without juggling baby and bags, and for Londo to just come home to baby already here, and this convenience is especially great after the rough nights and mornings we've been having around these parts and how late that has been making me to work and therefore back home.

So, that's the plan. The nanny will start 8:00 AM on Monday at our house, since my mom asked for a change as soon as possible. My sister was able to get the babysitter/nanny's mother (who has also watched both our girls and my brother's twins and is also fantastic) to take over the afternoons at my mom's until my niece starts at daycare. We will continue to look into daycares. My mom has offered to fill in if the nanny can't make it, as in if she is sick or something. So it seems to have all worked out.

But it's been tricky for two main reasons. It's not easy to be in a business agreement with family. We all get along really well, and everyone wants to do things amiably, but that is sometimes tricky to work out. Fortunately, we all worked together and figured out how to make this change happen without putting anyone out. The second reason it's been tricky is because trying to afford the full-time nanny means huge lifestyle changes for Londo and me. We are cutting out any and all extras, rearranging schedules and plans, clipping coupons and doing many other small to large changes that I'm sure I'll be writing about as time goes on. We really liked the financial planner, and I'm excited that we will be working with her. I'm sure she'll help us figure out other ways to find the money.

We believe making these changes will be worth it for the Pumpkin, and for my mom who has been watching two kids under two for almost a year and my niece for the year prior to that! Most of all, we are so thankful to my mom for her wonderful (and free) care of our daughter during this time in her life.

*While I loved the Montessori school, they cannot take her until she's is 2. She is 13.5 months now.