Insurance fiasco

When I found out I was pregnant my first thought was OhmygoshholycrapYAYahhhhh! Yes, that’s a word. Trust me. My next thought was finding a doctor but that got pushed aside in the excitement of telling my family.

The next day I started to think about finding a doctor to confirm there is in fact a human growing in me and to eventually deliver it. I happen to be blessed with really great insurance through my job. Since Joel and I are healthy people with no strong ties to any specific doctor we chose an HMO plan so I’m limited to my network in my OB choices.

My first stop was to my “portal” to try to find a list of doctors who are in my network. I don’t visit it often because I know who my primary doctor is and we haven’t had any visits that would require me checking on any bills. I logged on and clicked around trying to find the list of doctors in my network. I remember seeing them at one point… maybe when I chose my primary doctor? But that was years ago so I didn’t know where to look. I decided the tab that said “My Coverage” was as good a place as any to start.

And that’s when the panic began.

Coverage = cancelled

CANCELLED?!?!

My heart immediately started racing and I went back through my mind to when I selected coverage during annual enrolment last year. I thought, oh god what if I did it wrong?! We didn’t get new cards this year but since ours didn’t have expiration dates on them I didn’t think anything of it. We did get new cards for our dental coverage though so I knew I’d done something right during enrolment.

I tried to take deep breaths and think anything other than oh god oh god oh god  I’m pregnant with no health insurance oh god oh god oh god!!! Frantically I looked through my phone contacts to try and find the number for my company’s benefits center.

Eight thousand prompts and two different phone numbers later I finally got a human on the phone. I held it together through all the button pushing but I admit the minute she said, “Hello, my name is Lisa, how can I help you?” I burst into tears. I’m not exactly sure how she made out what I was saying but it was something like, “Hi, I was looking at my insurance *sob* and cancelled and *sob* I just found out I’m pregnant and *sob* whyyyyy?”

Bless that woman.

She got my info and was quickly able to tell me that she saw no problem on my company’s end of things. According to them my coverage was current and all good. That was when I started to breath again. She was kind enough to call BCBS for me and then transfer me over. Turns out it was just an internet problem. Apparently at the beginning of the year my policy number changed and since my login info was attached to that old number it showed as cancelled. All I had to do was reregister on the site with my new info and voila! no more problems. The nice lady even made sure our new cards were sent off and sent me a list of doctors I could see.

So now that that moment three hours of stress was over I had to get down to business and pick the person who would potentially deliver my first child.

I had a list of about 20 doctors and all I really had to go by was google to tell me if any of them are good or not.

Before I resorted to eenie meenie miny moe I DM’d the amazing Gina from The Feminist Breeder since I know she lives and works as a doula in the same general area that we live. I was a bit nervous since I know she’s insanely busy but she was so nice and after asking a couple questions she pointed me in the direction of a practice that seems to be exactly what I’m looking for. I have an appointment for this Friday so we’ll see how it goes. I’m equal parts excited and nervous.

Let’s just hope there’s no more insurance misunderstandings. Stress isn’t good for the baby!