I think that each generation looks at the last and tries to learn what did and did not work.  Growing up, one of the things that my father tried to help us with was managing money, because he always thought that he had done it poorly.  The funny thing is, there will always be decisions that we will regret after having made them, and yet time continues to march on, and we must learn from them.

It’s been no secret that I’ve have a few different group health plans throughout the time that I lost my first job, moved, and then got two more jobs before returning.  Each time, I had to decide what health insurance plan to keep, or whether to move to a new one.

The biggest decision I had to make was when I moved to the job before I returned to my present (and former) employer.

Back in August of 2009, I joined with a company doing Medical Transcription and Electronic Medical Records.  They were the first company where they actually made me wait three months to “see if I’d work out” as well as kept me on COBRA¹ until December of 2009.  This was fine by me because I liked the plan that I was on and thought I was close to meeting the High Deductible on that account.

In December of 2009 I had a choice to make.  I could either move to this new company’s plan, or I could stay on COBRA².  Why would I consider staying?  Because my new company’s plan would cost most of my salary just in premiums, and at the time I didn’t know I’d be leaving that job in March.

Oh, and may I add that I had a baby coming due end of December or early January³.

So we looked around and got some group health insurance quotes through some contacts that I had and presented them to the HR lady at the company.  She was very nice and did some research, but eventually concluded that they couldn’t switch that year and would look into it for 2010.

I then looked into whether or not I could get business insurance through my side job, but I would need more hours—so that wouldn’t work.

Finally, I opted to stay on COBRA—but my former company changed its health provider and I was locked into an extremely high deductible (because it was really cheap premiums) of 11,500.  Needless to say, I almost made it there with the baby—which ended up hitting all of our savings.

You see, you don’t know what is coming ahead.  You need to do your research, but even the best research may not prepare you for what lies in store.  Insurance is great to providing you some kind of protection for upcoming events, but be careful because what you may figure is a really good deal may turn out hurting you in the end.

Me?  I swapped in my High Deductible COBRA Plan in May⁴ for a normal co-pay based plan so that I could lower my premium.  So far, I’m happy that I did, except for the fact that I can’t contribute to my HSA.  Maybe my company will pick up that type of plan this season.

1. The government’s insurance continuation service [↩]
2. Thanks, President Obama. [↩]
3. We were really pulling for end of December because then he would be free! [↩]
4. I was within $3,000 of making it. [↩]