Why & How I Lost Health Insurance

I always had health insurance.


Always.


My late father drilled this mantra into me, even when I was in high school: "Never quit a job without having another one lined up to take its place. The reason is that you never want to be without health insurance. Health insurance is everything. If you have a horrible boss, laugh all the way to the bank until you have another job. But until then, do whatever it takes to keep your job, because if you lose health insurance, that's the whole ballgame."


Yeah, that's pretty much word for word. He said it so many times, so emphatically, that even now I hear his voice in my mind. He'd be turning over in his grave to know my situation right now.


I did a great job following my dad's advice. I never ever left a job without knowing, for a fact, that I had something in the wings that would give me replacement health insurance. Even when I was working at my first newspaper, where I was only making $200 gross per week and was so poor that I had to count coins for tuna fish and pasta .... I had health insurance.


There were a couple of times during my career as a newspaper and wire service journalist that I almost lost my job. I once worked for a union shop, where all of the news reporters shoveled $40 per month to a little old lady for union dues. She was the former newspaper's librarian and the current union treasurer. One day, I asked this person if I could look at the union finances to see how the money was being used. She refused. So I refused to pay my dues. Finally, after much drama and consternation -- and after she'd threatened to have me fired because I wasn't a union member in good standing -- she was forced to hand over the books. She admitted to embezzling thousands of dollars in Atlantic City. I kept my job, and one month later, I went to work for The Associated Press. I remember thinking at the time that I was more concerned about keeping that health insurance than about the embezzler's confession.


In another case, I left a job as a business editor after unfair treatment -- but by then, I was a newlywed, married to a U.S. serviceman. Uncle Sam's blanket covered me in that case. I went straight from the newspaper's strong health plan into the fold of the U.S. military, where all health concerns were addressed, no questions asked. By then, I was a freelancer, but my (now ex) husband's health care plans, both in the military and in his following civilian career, took care of my health needs.


I always had health insurance. It was never of concern to me.


But although as a single person I'd diligently followed my father's advice, it never occurred to me that tying my life to that of someone else might be my Achilles heel.


For that move -- that reliance on another person -- was my downfall.


And last year, in a perfect storm of circumstances that I never could have foreseen when my father gave me his edict, I lost my health insurance.


Tune in for the next part of the story that led to my Mission Impossible.

The Mission

I'm standing at the entrance of a Cracker Barrel Old Country Store, holding a giant Teddy Bear and greeting people with what I call my Female-Tom-Cruise-Plastic-Smile. My lower spine pulsates with pain, and  the arch of my left foot is pinching again with the pressure of the orthopedic shoe implant prescribed by my podiatrist. I sigh as the Oak Ridge Boys sing "Elvira" for the upteenth time over the loudspeaker, while bow-legged men clad in cowboy hats push past me in pursuit of biscuits and sausage gravy.


I didn't go to school for this.


In fact, for 20 years, I've been a journalist, unearthing stories about corrupt politicians, drug kingpins and even a Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan.


So you can safely say that when I'm working the floor of a Cracker Barrel, outfitted in a starched white shirt and firmly pressed brown apron, I conjure an image of Chuck Bartowski (computer-geek-turned-government-agent) at his clandestine job with the Buy More.


How did I end up here, you may ask? Am I on a secret story assignment for a top-flight news organization?


Um, not exactly, although I am a full-time freelance journalist. During the rest of the week, I write for a variety of magazines to keep a roof over my head.


But I'm here in the Cracker Barrel for one reason and one reason only -- my mission. And it seems to be an improbable, incomprehensible, incontrovertibly obnoxiously impossible mission:


To obtain health insurance.


But wait, I'm digressing. I guess we should press Rewind and go back to the beginning ... what started all of this? Why would I take a part-time job at a Cracker Barrel for health insurance, anyway?


Tune in tomorrow to find out why I had to accept my Mission Impossible: Health Insurance.