Mom died March 1. Today, I got the Medicare summary

[Bluetus]

34. There was one year there were nothing but no-name (junk) companies on Obamacare in my county

There were only 2 companies in the Exchange. One company is still operating, and I guess must be OK. The other one literally left the state at midnight on December 31 and left everybody hanging. Faced with the lack of options with any company I had ever heard of, I decided to do one of those Christian pitch-in plans. That isn't insurance and they don't actually promise to cover anything. But they did process the medical charges and got the 20% prices instead of the 100% prices. So I rolled the dice with that one.

That company also had a condition that they would not cover ANY cancer treatment, even for a totally new diagnosis until you had been in their system for a year. In other words, if you were diagnosed with ANY kind of cancer during the first year, they would NEVER cover any of those expenses.

I think you know how this story ended. I DID get diagnosed with prostate cancer. Fortunately, my insurance broker knew about this Christian "pray for the best" plan and had advised me to buy a one-year policy from a real insurance company that would cover a new cancer diagnosis (not a pre-existing condition). That policy would pay up to $100,000. The problem came up that, because I had that "pray for the best" arrangement, the treatment was billed out at the full BOGUS rate of $140,000.

It took me about 4 months and dozens of calls to finally get the hospital to at least give me the "self-pay discount" which brought it down to about $60K as I recall. (If I were a Canadian, it would have cost $0. As an American, if I had traveled to Canada for the exact same surgery, paying out of my pocket, it would have been $25K, certainly no more than $35K -- this was 10 years ago.) So I came out whole, but that's the system we have, and I bet only 5% of the population would have been able to navigate this as successfully as I did. The rest would just go bankrupt.

Here's the real pisser. My urologist/surgeon was fantastic. He literally saved my life. All the people I encountered on the medical side couldn't have been more supportive and caring. They were all heroes in my mind. But they are forced to work in the worst HC system in the world, administratively and financially. The best of times, the worst of times.

I do apologize for this side trip, especially at your time of grieving, and I hope none of this comes across as a lack of compassion for what you are going through. I lost my mother a decade ago and my father will not be with us too much longer, so I honestly share your pain and hope you have the strength to grieve and heal at the pace that works for you.