Beyond stress 10.24.25

To be fair, the broker who convinced me to drop my expensive supplemental health insurance policy for Medicare and told me United Healthcare Medicare Advantage (UHC) wouldn’t even charge a monthly payment, and I would pay just a small co-pay per doctor visit.

Cautionary Tale: “If it seems too good to be true – it probably is”.

I was so relieved, I failed to ask, ‘what it the catch?’ And she didn’t mention I would not be covered by Medicare at all any more. She probably skimmed over something about an HMO or a PPO and other acronyms with which I was unfamiliar. To smooth over any possible questions, she proudly announced that UHC was the biggest insurer in the country and therefore had the biggest pool of medical providers cover by this plan.

Also, with this UHC plan I would not need a medical exam for any pre-existing conditions – meaning my Interstitial Lung Disease. And I only owed Medicare $6000 to be collected monthly by (guess who?) United Healthcare, for all the years I hadn’t carried plan D – drug coverage.

So, like a lamb to slaughter I said, “sign me up.”** The result was the previous story titled “Stressors” and the experience of being at the end of my rope.

Since then, I have begun to understand the origins of my stress. They are the result of how I was taught to handle money from my dad and several other rules he thought would benefit me to know. They went in deep and made logical sense in the uncomplicated 60’s. I never questioned the validity of his rules, I just incorporated them as The Truth.

Some of them were: “Don’t buy anything you haven’t saved money for – pay in cash.” “Pay every bill immediately when it comes in.” “Only use a credit card to build a credit history, pay the balance in full right away.” “Never get into debt, it will ruin your credit rating.” **“Know exactly what you are getting into when you buy anything.”

After my “neurological disturbance” and the critical inner voices that kept berating me for being stupid, I had to look into my belief systems and that’s where I found my well-meaning dad. It was then that I discovered the above italicized beliefs. They make good financial sense, but he couldn’t possibly have conceived of the fine print written by a huge health insurance company policy ‘handbook.’ It was this volume I was referred to whenever I contacted the agent with a question.

My latest stress test came in the form of a bill for $5000 for the procedure to remove precancerous cells from my ear. Claim Denied. I was informed the surgeon was ‘out of network’ and her office address was incorrectly listed.  After a few hours on the phone, I did my duty to correct billing addresses and trust the UHC agent to present my case to his ‘team’.

At this point, I decided to put the papers and notes aside. I had done all I could and had to let it rest. I’m not adhering to the ‘rule,’ pay every bill immediately.’ We will see what happens. At least I am not currently losing any more sleep over United Healthcare.

So dear readers, if you have stressors piling on, you can do what I had to do.

Look into the beliefs or rules about how or who you are ‘supposed’ to be or how you ‘should’ act.

The critical inner voices will lead you to the taproot.

Blessings, Elizabeth