I was sixteen years old when I was inappropriately given a severe mental illness diagnosis. I remember my mother’s response to the diagnosis being far more dramatic than I had felt necessary at the time. She approached me in a state of minor hysteria, proclaiming, “Your father and I will always make sure you have insurance!” At the time, the severity of the grim future that was assumed to likely attach itself to this diagnosis rose to the surface like rapid fire. It was as though the world around me was expanding in size, just bigger and bigger. All the while, I sat in that doctor’s chair shrinking to an almost invisible level, the air unable to continue to be consumed by my lungs. As someone who grew up in a family whose economic status never had to consider insurance and medical care costs once I was around, I was in shock at the idea she believed I would be unable to provide care for myself. As a stubbornly headstrong and independent young woman at the time, I was terrified at the notion of remaining permanently attached to my parents from the perspective of dependency. It was at that time I began to become aware of the extreme uphill pathway I had stumbled upon by means of my entanglement in psychiatric care. This induced a sort of panic state, igniting my desperation to be self-sufficient. What I know now, is that my mother was terrified of my suffering her same experiences. This was to be economically unstable enough early in her marriage where they did not have insurance. Their first child was born while uninsured causing my mother to delay going to the hospital while in labor to the point she almost had a home delivery by accident! For me, it has caused every single decision I have ever made in my entire adult life to surround insurance and the maintenance of it.
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I began to work full-time the Monday after I graduated from high school. This was after a year and a half of tortuous psychiatric overmedication had caused me to almost fail out of high school altogether. Even with my gradually declining grades, my parents had offered a two-week European vacation that I refused. At the time, I was so disgusted with myself and what had become of me that I could not have appreciated that gift. My early high school career was revealing to my potential that at the beginning of my senior year I was accepted to Purdue University. It was sometime during the Spring, while literally barely making it to the finish line of a high school diploma, I had decided to put off going to college. This surrounded the fact that I knew, due to the condition I was in, there was no way I would be successful in my endeavors at that time. Even after making this choice myself, Purdue doubled down through the rescinding of their initial offer of acceptance – done through the usual means of cowardly avoidance that these entities tend to choose: the US postal system. Honestly, I could have done without that punch to the gut, solidifying I was not worthy. Still, I pressed forward, optimistic in my role as a dietary aid at a nursing home, a role I loved. There were times I entertained attempting to pursue the leadership there – sometimes I still wish I had. This position was not one that allowed me to fulfill the expectations of the collegial driven family I was raised and left me feeling like I needed to achieve more.
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From here, I became lost in the balance of needing to have insurance and wanting to have freedom and to pursue goals. After being raised in a small town whose roots run back four generations on both sides, I have always felt this pull within me to be on the go. I was forever held back by that nasty need to be insured. To be honest, I didn’t even know why I needed it really. It was just embedded in me that this was something one could not live without and I desperately wanted to be on my own without assistance. I attempted a brief move to a small nearby metropolitan where I would be able to find work and attend an off-chute location of a larger university. My work scheduled called for me to work late hours making attention to my studies impossible enough that I dropped out – but I kept that insurance, though. From this point, I went to work for my father who was able to provide me insurance though the coverage was lacking as it has tended to for those working for small business owners such as he. During this time, I attempted to go back to school multiple times having to drop out each time. I jumped into an impulse marriage and became pregnant within 6 months of that – all the while maintaining numero uno, you guessed it, insurance! During my time bearing child, I went to weekly therapy without medication, getting to the start of the roots of my neurodivergence and severe maternal relational trauma. It would be a post-partum event in 2010 involving the complete subjective removal of my civil rights that would cause me to a.) double down on my conviction and b). realize how small I would have to become to prove myself once and for all. It was during my pregnancy I became aware that an insurance company is unable to consider a past diagnosis as active if one does not receive treatment for that diagnosis in seven years. For the record and others sake – I do not know if this is wholly accurate, it was just something I read and latched ahold of and as I have said, give someone with OCD traits something to hold onto with a passion and forget it!
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It was after this point, without medication and with a strong will to make something of all I’ve been through, that I was finally able to return to school successfully. After four years of year-round schooling as an adult commuter student with a full-time job with benefits, it came time to for graduation. Of course, I spent my senior year pregnant and expecting to have my second child the week before finals of my last semester. It was not looking like I was going to be able to continue to hold my family’s benefits, luckily in time for the Affordable Care Act to be rolled out. So, I gave it a shot. To say this was the worst experience I have had with insurance amongst the horror stories would be an understatement. The initial application process wasn’t difficult, there really just weren’t anything but high-deductible plans that were fairly expensive to choose between. While that was the sole year of my participation in this product, I have not heard a difference in the results since then for what is available. The worst of what I would experience wouldn’t happen until the actual birth of my daughter – a qualifying life-change event for any insurance carrier to be able to make insurance changes. Usually this means a call to member services and the providing of the facts. Unless, of course, that provider received their original information through the government—then the change has to be made through the government. Well, let me tell you how disastrously they handled the onslaught of applications received which had exceeded any lawmakers planned expectations. They handled their overload by simply deleting the excess of applications they presumed they would not need to hold on to. After the early May delivery of my beautiful baby, I spent countless hours through the very last week in December attempting to get my daughter added to my policy. Of all the things I know myself to be, connected is one of them. Now, this has not gotten me much social fulfillment overall, however it has allowed me access to knowledge and professionals outside of the reach to the typical person. Because of this, my then insurance agent enlisted the support of a local Senator who reached out to Ben Shapiro who was willing to hear out our situation if I would bring my infant on the show with me. I couldn’t let myself do this as our arguments were not the same. His, a stereotypical outrage against government healthcare. Mine, a disagreement with lawmakers ability to make and enforce policy without having to present a plan on how to get there. My opinion on healthcare – no one should face bankruptcy due to a health issue. No one should fear going to obtain care due to the financial predicament it will put them in. No one should make every life decision based on whether or not they have insurance. I ended that year with an evening phone call from the White House to add my daughter successfully to the policy. Of course, it was never applied appropriately, and this cost my family thousands of dollars out-of-pocket that we did not have to spend.
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After this year, I returned to full-time work and the maintenance of my family’s benefits. This is the position I have remained bound to for nearly a decade. It was during a health emergency that I felt forced to leave my corporate position. This crisis was really the final straw in a months long string of events and so I had already taken the steps to understand what my exit could look like. This included first priority of course that my husband felt up to the responsibility of holding our family’s insurance for the first time in our 16-year marriage. He had touched base with his HR to find out the process. I had reached out to understand the outlines of my tuition reimbursement contract. My plan had been to drop to a PRN level position and slowly phase out in the hospital that had kept me miserable. Instead, I was strung along in the full time BS position I was overqualified to start and now with an MSW and no more pay. It was in the middle of a one in a million near-death reaction to the flu shot that I would be unable to care about much more than ridding myself the corporate affiliation which had plagued my life. It was smack in the middle of this I realized the significance this need to hold insurance had really held for me. This was that it kept me reeled in to the point of preventing my wild side from taking me off the deep end. The actual care it availed and costs associated with it were null and void as it would happen.
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