For me, you pointed out one of the major insurance problems in the last two
sentences of your post: coverage of pre-existing conditions, especially
since most people have a least one person with a history of a serious or
chronic illness in their family. That combined with the huge number of
people who have no insurance at all makes this one of the scariest systems
in the world (and I'm trying to get a job that has no health
insurance--non-tenured faculty at a university!). In the day of
cost-cutting managed care with a unwieldy bureaucracy, at least a
government bureacracy would include the services of ALL doctors, rehab
centers, hospitals, etc. under one umbrella, which would have solved the
problems you described and all of the sleep-disrupting problems I had with
the insurance company as well. (I would gladly have had PT at home, which
my insurer preferred in order to cut costs, but I was unable to climb the
stairs to and from my second-floor apartment to let people and therapists
in or to escape in the case of a fire, so I went through a whole hassle
with the insurer about not sending me home from the rehab hospital too
soon.)
My mom was saying the other day that she and her friends are worried about
combinations (buy outs?) of managed care providers and pharmaceutical
companies restricting access to medications from rival pharmaceutical firms
even if the other medication were more appropriate, so the good experience
you had in terms of the insurance paying for all of the various medications
you tried could be somewhat in jeopardy.
Aurore
ableck(AT)nas.edu
-------------------
original message from Barbara:
<snip>
Other than that, they've been great. They've covered the different
medications I've tried with no arguments at all.
Has anyone had trouble getting coverage after changing companies with
a
TM diagnosis as a "pre-existing" condition? I am concerned about that if my
husband ever changes jobs.
Barbara