...that I'd really love to return, but it seems that I can't find the receipt.
A week and a half ago Mark came home on a Friday with some unwelcome news. He had very unexpectedly lost his job.
About 6 months ago, he left a company he had been employed with for about 10 years in hopes of expanding his skill set. What was supposed to be a good move for his career turned out to be exactly the opposite when 6 months later this new company let him go with no more explanation than "it's just not working out, but we're happy to give you a good recommendation moving forward". Gee, thanks. Before he was let go he hadn't received any negative feedback or any indication that things "weren't working" so we're both kind of baffled by this turn of events.
With my being a stay-at-home-mom not only have we lost our only source of income, but all of our healthcare coverage as well. Oh, and I'm less than 4 weeks from my estimated due date with baby #2. GREAT timing, huh? We've never been in this situation before and I can definitely say that it sucks. Bad.
Also, I just have to say, I've never been a fan of the craptastic way that health insurance is run in this country. But this? This is exactly why our system is so messed up. Mark is unemployed through no fault of his own and now we have no access to affordable healthcare coverage. Yes, we have the option to elect COBRA, but it's quite expensive and paying those premiums plus what we're going to have to pay out of pocket for the birth of this baby is going to put a significant dent in our savings. Private insurance isn't even an option because individual plans are still allowed to view pregnancy as a pre-existing condition and deny coverage.
How is it that we've lost our only source of income and at the top of the list of worries is health insurance? That's wrong. My access to affordable healthcare coverage should in no way be tied to a job because one thing has nothing to do with the other. And that's all I will say on this topic for now because I could very easily devolve into a very long rant.
Thankfully we have some money in savings and we started out 2012 debt-free (with the exception of our mortgage) so that's a HUGE help financially. Mark should also be eligible to collect unemployment benefits from the company considering the circumstances surrounding the separation, but we're waiting to hear back on this. We're really hoping that he is able to find a new position that's a good fit for him and that it happens quickly, but at the same time it's not a great time of the year for job shopping with the holidays and people being off work and end of year budget stuff. Despite Mark having already applied for several promising positions I seriously doubt the process is really going to start moving until after the 1st of the year. Everything is just kind of scary and uncertain right now.
There's never really a good time for these sorts of things, but I really, really wish we wouldn't have been faced with this whole situation until after the holidays and after this baby arrived. The timing just makes everything so much more stressful and difficult :(
Maybe Santa will bring us health insurance.
So sorry to hear this. Can you apply for state aid? when my sister's husband was laid off, she qualified for WIC, food stamps and state medical coverage.
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