There's no crying at WORK!

Well, it had to happen at some point. I cried at work today. I didn't do anything wrong, and only one person saw me (my colleague who I actually instant messaged in the cube next door to borrow some tissues!), but it still stinks to realize that there's tears welling up and you really can't stop it.

When I got to work this morning, my boss asked me if I had checked in with my temp agency about whether or not they offer any health insurance to their workers. When layoffs had happened earlier this month, my boss asked me candidly if I would consider extending my tenure as a temp. I said I'd like to, but what I was really concerned about was health insurance. I'm scheduled to lose COBRA coverage in March, and I am certainly not at the point in my life where I should even consider going uninsured. As an individual health plan won't really work for me (they exclude pre-existing conditions for one year, and they will not cover prescriptions that I take), I will have to be with an employer-based plan. I told her I had not heard back, so I called my rep and asked her if she could help me out. For a brief, shining moment, I was a bit excited, because my rep told me that she had gone on the plan they offered from COBRA when she started temping, and that it was pretty good. She sent me the enrollment forms and information, and I began to look it over.

And it was even worse than an individual plan. Seriously, in my recollection of insurance, a lot of their exclusions seemed downright illegal. Not to mention there was a $5,000 cap every year on total hospital costs, with a $15,000 limit overall, including prescriptions and doctor's visits. While I don't anticipate going over that, it shocked me - what if I get pregnant? Do I hold the baby in until the policy period renews? Do I opt for less prenatal care or less post-delivery care - because there's NO way that a baby can be delivered for less than $5,000 total unless possibly there's not ONE single complication? What if - even more of a knock on wood - I got hit by a car, or got cancer? I know $15,000 seems like a lot of money, but I assure you, it's not once you start talking doctor and hospital visits. Not to mention this plan had a $1,000 deductible, so what exactly WOULD I be paying for? I looked up their stance on specialists and discovered that not only would one need a referral to see one, there was only ONE Ear-Nose-Throat doctor in the entire Charlotte Metro area under their network. ONE. When I clicked on his name, there it was: "currently not accepting new patients". So even if any ear, nose or throat infection were covered (which it wouldn't be, since I've been labelled as "chronic" and therefore have a pre-existing condition), I couldn't get into see a doctor for it for at least six months. And thanks to the $5,000 cap, if I (god forBID) had to have surgery for it, I'd be paying cash. My last surgery? Sum total was $45,000. Pricey, but if I hadn't have had it, I would have lost the hearing in my left ear. Thank GOD insurance paid it.

Another option has always been to attempt to get this place to hire me and just place me on their much better insurance plan. My boss and her boss have been working to try to push this through, but with layoffs and our only client suffering huge layoffs and plummeting stock prices themselves, even getting me in as a temp was somewhat of a "keep it under the radar" thing. So getting me on their benefits may not even work in the first place.

So I started crying. Partly because I'm scared that I won't have a job OR health care in a month or two, and partly because I just didn't know what to do. Then I talked to a friend (she happened to call at that moment) who said "oh wow...I'm SO lucky. I mean, I've NEVER had to worry about health insurance. My dad always put me on his plan and then I got married, and MY husband's benefits are AWESOME." Well, eff you very much then. (No, she doesn't know this blog exists) Not that I don't envy her level of insurance, but really, telling me how fantastic hers was didn't even help in the "maybe you should try this..." sense.

I finally went out to lunch with my boss and kind of leveled with her. I asked her what exactly the hold-up was in the decision of whether or not to hire me. Was it money? Was it that the office didn't think it took this many people to keep the department running? Was it that they were unsure of my performance? Was it that they were afraid that I would just take off once they had paid the finders' fee to the temp agency? Or something else? I told her that I wanted to stay, but at some point, I was starting to see where it would be entirely more cost-effective to hire me full-time and pay an upfront fee for me than to pay an ongoing hourly premium for me by going through the agency. She agreed with me, and said that it had nothing to do with my performance, and that they need me to help with the workload, because there's no way of functioning without another worker. She did say that they had been burned by a few temps before and it was a concern that I'd leave, but that it didn't seem to be too much in my character and that I was far different from 99% of the temps they've worked with. The biggest problem lays simply with the fact that they have to convince two companies who are rapidly losing money in this economy - my company and our only client - that they need another worker, and specifically THIS worker: me. While she couldn't promise anything, it was a nice reassurance that I wasn't getting led around, so I guess that's all I can hope for.

As for the insurance, I guess we're still in the same situation. I may have to live with really crappy insurance for a short or a long period of time, one in which I'll actually have to pay a rather large sum of money for every month. I guess I just have to pray I don't get sick or pray for someone (be it them or another firm) to give me a full-time offer to get me out of this economy or get me out of the crappy insurance.

And now my sinus headache hurts again. Figures.