When I left my law firm job last June, one of the few things that I knew I would miss was my health insurance. Don’t get me wrong, the coverage wasn’t that great, but I knew that getting individual policies for my husband and I would not be cheap or easy. Until my husband finishes law school or the publishing company that I work for now gets much bigger, group coverage is a thing of the past. Fortunately, my membership in the Louisiana State Bar Association makes me eligible to obtain an individual policy from a local insurance company. Unfortunately, the only way that this company would agree to write a policy on me was to do so with a rider denying coverage for “mental/nervous conditions.” Apparently, this rider is my punishment for (1) needing therapy, (2) being in therapy, and (3) admitting (1) & (2) on my insurance application.
So, being in desperate need of insurance, I accepted the policy and the rider and was assured by my insurance agent that the company would review the rider in six months. Here we are, more than six months later, I’m still in therapy (and paying for it out of pocket) and I still have this rider. The insurance company is finally addressing my appeal (a very convincing letter as to why they should cover my “mental/nervous conditions”), but I am not holding out much hope that they will go for it. Part of me wants to send them a laundry list of why I should really be in therapy (or maybe I should just let them meet my parents), but part of me is insulted that I am basically begging for this coverage. Isn’t it at least remotely possible that if more people were in therapy (and dealing with their issues), they would have fewer other health problems? I am not saying that therapy cures lung cancer, but I am saying that stress and anger do have a detrimental effect on your health.
This policy also does not cover fertility treatment, but that’s a story for another day.
Life in the Little Difficult 