Intelligence Gathering from a Mole Over Spicy Tuna Sushi and Asian Plum Wine

Every secret agent gathers intelligence before heading into a Mission Impossible.


And I, in my quest for affordable health insurance, was no exception. My doctors had finally given me the green light that my legs and feet could stand for hours. So I scoured the Internet for potential companies that would give me a part-time gig and health coverage.


Around this time, my uncle came to town.


And this is the type of uncle who knows business. He freely dispenses inside-track money-making strategies of millionaires like a drunk KGB Cold War mole downing Stolichnaya 80 proof Vodka while chomping on pickled cucumbers and air-dried fish in the shadowy recesses of a Moscow dive.


Except in this case, the needed information was delivered over Asian plum wine and spicy tuna sushi in a bourgeois Japanese restaurant stuck in the Kentucky Bluegrass, not in guttural Russian-rich tones but in a smooth Southern drawl.


But I digress.


"How's business?" my uncle asked as I stabbed chopsticks into a hunk of raw fish.


"It's down. And my health insurance costs are killing me. But I've been working hard on getting my legs strong enough so that I can take a part-time job at a place that will give me a cheaper option."


He mulled that while taking a sip of fruity-sweet wine.


"I have a friend."


That's the magic phrase for any intelligence-gathering mission, because when people start talking about who they know and what their friends know, you can pretty much bet it's a golden nugget of information. I waited expectantly for him to continue.


"This friend has a wife who recently took a job at Cracker Barrel."


I almost spit my sushi on the grill where the chef was dramatically flipping a shrimp in the air.


"Cracker Barrel," I repeated.


"Cracker Barrel," said he, raising one eyebrow.


"And they gave her health insurance?"


"Oh, yeah. For 15 hours a week."


"What?"



These were pearls, here!


"Yes. 15 hours a week. All she does is wander around that store, saying hi to people, wrapping presents, putting ribbons on rocking chairs, for 15 hours a week. And she gets stock options and health benefits."


The chef lit up one of those obnoxious "volcanoes" made from a stack of onions and nearly singed off my eyebrows, but I wasn't paying attention. This was the information I needed.


"And how does she feel about working there?"


"She loves it! Absolutely loves it! She gets discounts when she shops. She likes the old people who shop. All of her friends come in and shop. She gets out of the house. She socializes. She gets to listen to country music. She gets to eat Cracker Barrel food. It's great."


As if to punctuate how great it was, he forked a piece of filet mignon and nodded knowingly.


Cracker Barrel.


I hadn't even thought of Cracker Barrel. All this time I was looking at serving coffee through a drive-through. But Cracker Barrel really was an option. I liked all of the little home-spun gifts. I liked the "Y'all-come-back-now" atmosphere. I liked the food. I liked the Southern charm. I liked the candles, the rockers, the checkers on the front porch ... and I even liked the corny folksy way they greeted you when you came through the front door.


Plus, there was a Cracker Barrel across the street from the Japanese restaurant, sitting up on a hill under the setting sun. I could hear the angelic, "Laaaaaa!" as I hopped into my VW bug convertible like a chorus out of a Monty Python movie.


Cracker Barrel.


I could accomplish the Mission Impossible there!


But there was one more thing standing in my way before I took the plunge and applied for a job.


Tune in for the next part of the story.

Pulling off a Fulcrum

The "fulcrum" is one of my favorite scenes in Mission Impossible 3. Super spy Ethan Hunt is in Shanghai and has to retrieve an object from a heavily-guarded skyscraper. This place is so rife with machine-gun-toting goons that Hunt has to devise a scheme to distract them -- on a sloping roof.


He swings from one building like a pendulum (the writers call this a "fulcrum," but the movie has since been criticized for incorrect terminology) ... while his cohorts keep the guards occupied by launching baseballs at them. The question is, can Hunt make the jump to building #2 without plunging to his death and attracting the attention of the gun-wielding guards?


Here's the video from the movie, just in case you missed it:







Pretty much, I felt like I was getting ready to pull off my own fulcrum when it came time to finding a part-time job and getting cheaper health insurance. And like Mission Impossible, this Mission required careful forethought, strategic planning and deliberate analysis.


Potential pitfalls abounded:


1) Who would babysit my child in case of a snow day or in case he was sick? Who would get him off of the school bus if I needed to fill in a shift that crossed into his drop-off time?


2) How many hours a week could I work at the part-time job and still maintain my full-time schedule of magazine interviews and writing? How should I plan the calendar so that I could keep editors happy and at ease while I worked a non-cerebral job on the side?


3) What type of work would be least invasive into my "thinking time" that was required to generate creative magazine copy? What type of job wouldn't drain me so that I could accomplish the rest of my work?


4) Would I be willing to work nights and weekends if I did land a part-time job? What effect would that have on the rest of my life?


5) And most importantly ... there was one wildcard in my equation: Could my body take it? Would my legs and feet give out? Had I put in enough time at the physical therapist? Would I have enough energy? If called upon to lift something heavy, could I do it? And was I in good enough shape to stand on my feet, stay up with my gym workouts, do my writing, meet my deadlines, handle being a single mother ... and work a part-time job?


You see the problem.


In short ... to my mind, this looked about as daunting as jumping from one skyscraper to another in Shanghai.


As I was starting to think that this was a pie-in-the-sky idea, my uncle came to town.


What he told me next thoroughly plunged me into my Mission Impossible.


Tune in for the next part of the story ...

The Mission Gets the Go-Ahead

August 2011.


My podiatrist's office.


She breathlessly breezes into the room, a big smile on her face.


"Well, look at you."


I beam back at her. I'm 20 pounds lighter, my muscles are more toned, my blood sugar is lower, and most importantly, the pain in my feet is gone and the strength in my legs has returned.


"I know. That physical therapist is a miracle worker."


"That's part of it, but give yourself some credit," the doctor says, continuing to smile. "You know, 90 percent of the people who come in here don't do what you did."


"How's that?"


"They don't listen to me."


"You're kidding. Why wouldn't they?"


"It's too hard. What I ask of them, what Scott (the physical therapist) asks of them -- they're not willing to do it."


"Wow."


"Wow is right. You're not going to believe this, but you've done it."


"Done what?"


"Gotten better. You've worked so hard. SO hard! Do you know that most people take a minimum of six months to get over what you had? Usually, it's nine months to a year, though. And you did it. You did it in THREE months."


We sit there in silence, sort of reveling in my new blaze of glory. I honestly feel like an Olympic champion, an Everest climber, a triathlon winner.


Then I take the plunge.


"So I can go ahead and do what I've been planning."


"What's that?"


"Get a part-time job."


"Well ..." she hesitates. "There's still the matter of your spine. You'd have to stand on your feet for hours at a time. Yes, you're stronger, but we need to make sure your back can take it."


"Huh."


She turns and writes an order for a spinal specialist to take a look at me.


"If he clears you, go for it," she says.


And I do. The spinal specialist reveals that my back pain is because I've been sedentary by my computer as a full-time writer. A little bit of time at a part-time job on my feet will strengthen it, he says.


All lights green, I decide to dive into my Mission Impossible.


I decide to apply for a part-time job at a place that will give me affordable health insurance.


Tune in for the next part of the story ...

And So "The Mission" Began ...

"How much longer do you think it'll take before my feet and legs are strong again?"


I was sitting on a table while my physical therapist was pummeling my feet with his bear-paw-sized hands, gripping a hand towel and gritting my teeth through the pain.


He paused and looked up. "Well, I'd say you need to come in here for at least three months."


"Huh."


He went back to the torture.


"Well, let me ask you this."


He stopped again and looked up.


"How long do you think it'll take before I'm ready to do something like ... take a part-time job at a place like Starbucks? Just something simple, like serve coffee to people?"


"Well, let's see ... You'd have to stand on your feet for hours at a time. Right now, your legs can't handle that, and we know your feet would break. So why don't you focus on doing the physical therapy, and then think about getting a part-time job, if that's what you want to do?"


"OK."


He smiled and grabbed a calf and proceeded to rub it so hard that I felt like a hot coal was burning into the muscle. I put the hand towel in my mouth and bit down on it to keep from screaming. And then to distract myself from the agony, I started doing some calculations in my head.


If I was getting a certain amount per month for stories -- and going to physical therapy -- and paying out $503 per month for health insurance -- and still couldn't continue to market for new work because the pain was so intense ... I could only do it for so long before I'd run out of money. There just wasn't enough coming in to keep up with the cost of what was going out.


BUT.


I also had heard via friends there were actually companies that included part-time workers in their health insurance plans. If I could find a company like that, I could work on the side, get coverage at a cheaper rate while freelancing and come out ahead financially.


However, there was this little problem with the threat of the bones in my feet breaking.


My Mission was clear, though.


I resolved, right there on that table in the physical therapist's office, that I would overcome this physical limitation. I would do whatever he said, go through whatever pain I had to endure, give my entire focus to getting well again ... so that I could get a part-time job and attain affordable health insurance. I would work myself to death on the Spanish Inquisition Machine, lift weights with my legs, curl my toes into towels to strengthen my feet and silently curse into a towel while my legs and feet were hammered again and again.


If I could get affordable health insurance, it would all be worth it. If I could provide health care for me and my child, all of it was necessary.


I set my face like flint and resolved to achieve the Mission Impossible.

The Spanish Inquisition Torture Machine

June 2011.


My Physical Therapist's Office.


I've never had physical therapy, so I had no idea what to expect. When I found the location of the physical therapist, I was shocked to see it tucked into a baseball training facility. Exercise machines lined the wall. Weights sat in the corners. And tables for the therapy itself were throughout. I'd dressed in a Chico's Travelers getup my first time out, but I immediately discovered that workout attire was necessary. This was a place for sweating.


And yes, I was in for a hard workout. Actually, I'd say that the first 3 weeks with my physical therapist were nothing short of torturous. No froo-froo massaging of muscles at this place. No, this was serious deep-tissue healing. You ever hear the expression, "searing pain?" There's a reason for that. When my physical therapist pummeled me after I'd been through my workout paces, it felt as if he was taking a hot iron and rubbing it up and down my calves and the soles of my feet. I would bite into a hand towel to keep from screaming out loud or dig my fingernails into the palms of my hands. I usually left feeling as if my entire body was bruised, and sometimes within the hour, bruises would appear.


But the pinnacle of the place there was something I called, "The Spanish Inquisition Torture Machine." Everyone else knows it as the Versaclimber. In fact, if you dial up Julia Roberts in "Sleeping With the Enemy," you can see Patrick Bergin using a Versaclimber in one of the scenes. This thing stands vertically. You put your feet in stirrups and hands on two handles. And then you "climb," as hard as you can. The first day I was on it, the physical therapist said, "Let's see you do 5 minutes." I made it for one, and I was dizzy with exhaustion.


The point of all of this was, the workout itself was brutal, but then it came time to heal and strengthen my legs and feet. I had to keep doing exercises at home, in between the visits. And I usually spent at least a couple of hours per day with my legs and feet in ice. I'd work out the muscle tension in the same fashion I'd seen the physical therapist work, and I had to grit my teeth while I literally pushed on bruises. Sometimes my dog would sit by my side, wagging his tail and placing his head on my knee while I yelled for the pain I was inflicting on myself.


Now, the cost of the physical therapy wasn't as much of an issue as the effects that this had on my income. See, my physical therapist was a saint of a guy. He had a special charity program for people who had high insurance deductibles, like me. He only charged me $20 per visit, and I was usually there 2 hours per day, 3 days per week. And I have to tell you, that was nothing short of a gift from God. I'll be grateful to that physical therapist every day for the rest of my life.


The real cost to me came in lost work time. For six hours per week, I was with the physical therapist. You'd think it would stop there, but after that, I was in so much pain that I could barely put two words together. I'm a writer. I depend on clarity of mind to do my job. I absolutely couldn't think for the pain. And there's no such thing as workman's comp for freelance writers, whose "injury" is pain from physical therapy, which prevents them from writing.


I made a decision into the first week of it. I cut back work from one of my clients by half. And I decided I would alone concentrate on her work and on my current pending assignments from other magazines. I would not market for new work. I would keep things as status quo, and I would focus on getting my legs and feet well again.


The problem was that about four weeks into the physical therapy, I could see the financial toll it was taking. I was paying out $503 every month for the health insurance premium. Then I was paying the physical therapist $240 (and I can tell you that without that charity program, I would have had to stop). Add into that the regular living expenses and feeding a growing child (who eats non-stop, by the way!). Suddenly, I didn't have enough to get by. It came up on me quicker than I ever expected.


Then I came up with a plan. I would find cheaper health insurance and cut my expenses, increasing my income. And I knew just how to do it.


Tune in for the next part of Mission Impossible: Health Insurance.

The Mission Goes Awry

May 2011.


My podiatrist's office.






I stared at the X-ray on the wall, a side view of my left foot, the bones linking from toe to heel like the Tappan Zee Bridge.




The exam room door opened, and my young, vibrant doctor swept in, her brow furrowed, her pretty mouth pursed.




"Well."




That's it? That's all she had to say to me? "Well?" "Well?" I stared, waiting for the other shoe to drop, so to speak.




"I didn't need five seconds looking at your X-rays to know what's going on," she said in response to my silence. "You have a high arch. Most people's arches raise 10 to 15 degrees off of the ground. Yours is at a 45-degree angle."




"OK." I still didn't understand why she looked like she was about to deliver a death knell.




"You can't walk anymore."




"Yes I can. See?" I jumped off the examination table and started walking around the room.




"No, no, I mean, you walk for exercise, right? You can't do that anymore."




"Why not?"




"The bones in your feet will break. They can't take the pressure. Plus, you have some other things going on. Achilles Tendinitis in the right foot. Plantar Fasciitis in the left. And Peripheral Neuropathy in both."




She went on to explain the layman's terms behind the Latin, and then she dropped her bomb.




"So to regain strength in your legs and avert surgery on your feet and keep you walking, you have to go to physical therapy."




"Physical therapy? For how long?"




"I don't know. It's indefinite. But if you don't go, if we don't treat this, the bones in your feet will break."




She scribbled a "prescription" order to a physical therapist, gave me some directions to his place and told me to come back in about three weeks. "By then, we'll know what we're dealing with," she said, sending me out of the door with a wave and a smile, as if she was wishing me a relaxing vacation in the Bahamas.




I'd been maintaining my expensive health care plan under Kentucky Access. It was doable, because in December, I'd successfully landed my child in the Kentucky Children's Health Insurance Program. But this news threw an enormous wrench into my Mission. I didn't have time for physical therapy. I was struggling to keep up with my writing assignments. Having to throw physical therapy in the mix would mean I'd have to turn down stories -- and money. There was no telling what the fallout would be from this.




Unfortunately, I was about to enter a season of austere frugality.




Tune in for the next part of the story of Mission Impossible: Health Insurance.

A Stitched Foot, a Gingerbread House & the Public Welfare Office

Last night, present day ...


The white car was driving at about 15 miles per hour, and I was determined to catch it.


My foot, wrapped in an ace bandage and still pulsing from the five stitches earlier this week, was an afterthought as I tucked a small brown box under my arm and took off running after the red tail lights. My breath puffed white in the crisp air as I raced and shouted and waved my arms over my head.


"Stop!" I yelled, hoping that they'd hear me. "Stop! Stop!"


I could hear the "Mission Impossible" theme song in my mind with each pounding step on the pavement. The car hesitated for one moment while the driver turned right. "Yes!" I said to myself, then, "Noooooo!" as the tire gave a short squeal while she took off into the night.


"Dammit," I whispered, standing under a streetlight and looking dejectedly at the box in my hand. I trudged back into the Cracker Barrel.


"A guest left this gingerbread house ornament behind," I told a manager who was barking orders at short-order cooks.


"What do you want me to do about it?"


"Can you look up her receipt on the register so that I can get her name?"


"And do what with it?"


I stared at him. The answer was so clear to me.


"So I can call her."


"And how would you do that from the receipt?"


I paused again. Now waitresses were forming a circle and watching this conversation with amused curiosity.


"I'd do a Google search on her last name and find her, probably on whitepages.com, and I'd call her and tell her to get her ornament and that I just chased her in the parking lot, but I lost her."


He turned back to the lineup of steaming food to send out orders to the dining room.


"Well, you can do that yourself. Just ask the cashiers to look it up for you if you think you can find her."


At least one waitress snickered, and I realized that I was allowing my two worlds to collide. During my 20-year career as a news journalist, I was accustomed to chasing cars, yelling at people in parking lots to get a news story and going to all lengths to find their phone number so that I could get the scoop on my competition. But I realized how absurd I looked, standing there with a gift-wrapped box containing a $6 gingerbread house for someone's stupid Christmas tree, which wasn't even up yet. After all, we only just celebrated Halloween.


I returned to the gift store, scribbled a note explaining that someone might return for it and left it on my manager's desk.


Then I realized with much chagrin that my little stunt had cost me. My foot began burning in my shoe. The stitches. I'd forgotten that I had stitches. Would I have to pay more for a followup visit to the doctor, just because I'd confused news story gathering with customer care?


And you know ... I then reminded myself that even if that's the case, it's worth it if I can get health insurance for both me and my child.


Because last year at this time, I had to do the unthinkable so that my little boy could go to the doctor.


***************************************************************************


December 22, 2010.


Three days before Christmas.


An icy rain, the type that goes straight into your bones, with a swirling wind to add a dash of misery, is absolutely pounding on my head. I'm not dressed for this day, wearing clogs with no socks and slogging through mud puddles.


I feel as if I've been transported into the world of Charles Dickens, and I'm one of his main characters in dreary 19th-century London.


I'm headed to the public welfare office, you see, to get health insurance for my child. I can't afford to put him on the Kentucky Access plan. This is my one shot. Otherwise, I'll move back in with my mother and give up my rented home so that I can pay for insurance for both of us.


I'm struck when I enter the window-less room. Old people wearing thin sweaters. Mothers with infants tucked into car seats. Children with yellowed skin from lack of proper diet, hacking liquid coughs. I look at my winter coat and feel like I'm clad like Princess Grace of Monaco.


I wait for 10 minutes at a window, while clerks laugh behind the glass, look at computer screens and answer a phone that won't stop ringing. Finally, someone opens the pane. "Yes?" she barks.


"I'm here to apply for health insurance for my little boy."


"Oh. Go over there and fill out that paperwork, and bring it back here." She closes the window in my face.


I find a pencil with worn-down lead and fill out the particulars ... ages, people in the household ... my income ... and the reason I'm here. I wait another five minutes at the window for someone to briefly open it, snatch the paper and direct me to sit down.


"Hey," someone whispers. I turn to see a woman with a toddler on her knee. "Make sure they stamp that and give you a copy."


"Stamp it?"


"Yeah," another woman says. "If you don't have a stamp, they'll lose it. You'll come in here a month from now, and they'll tell you that you were never here. Get them to stamp it with a date on it so that you can prove you handed the paper to them."


"Um-hmm," a third woman says, nodding. "I learnt that the haaaaaaard way."


I looked around the room and all eyes were fixed on me, all heads nodding.


"Thank you. Thank you so much for the advice. This is my first time here," I offer.


"We know," someone else says.


I sit uncomfortably on a metal chair and wait. The window opens again, and someone calls my name. A young man is holding my paperwork. We discuss my application in front of the room of curious listeners.


"This shouldn't be a problem," he says. "You'll get a letter in the mail, either way."


"Thank you. What do I do now?"


He smiles. "You leave."


"Oh." I pause, then I look over my shoulder at my newest best friends, whose eyebrows are in their foreheads. "Hey, um, before I leave, could I get a copy of that, stamped with today's date?"


He hesitates. "Sure," he says. "Not a problem."


I sit back down. Someone places their hand on my shoulder.


"Good job," she says.


I've never felt so bereft in my life.


Tune in for the next part of the tale, "Mission Impossible: Health Insurance."

The Only Health Coverage (in the World) Available to Me

A gash on the bottom of my foot required five stitches this week. I was helping to unload a tractor trailer at my part-time job at Cracker Barrel (and yes, I promise, we will get to how and why I'm there). When I got home, my foot had, for lack of a better description, imploded. A 3/4-inch wound opened, all by itself, on the ball of my sole.

I'm still working at Cracker Barrel this weekend, my foot wrapped tightly in my shoe and my body filled with 10 days of antibiotics to do away with the infection that quickly took hold. But I haven't obtained their health insurance yet. (We'll eventually get to that!)

I hesitated to hit the Doc-in-the-Box for help (an urgent treatment care center), because frankly, my current insurance -- the policy I want to eventually replace with the one at Cracker Barrel -- has a high deductible. I still haven't met it. 

The doctor clucked her tongue at the wound and tested my blood sugar. No, I'm not diabetic -- yet. But the wound is indicative of what happens to diabetics, she explained.

I paid a $10 copay, and I fully expect a hefty bill in the mail for that visit. I was able to go to that doctor because for the past 11 months, I have maintained payment on a high-cost plan that is available to people with pre-existing medical conditions.

As I explained earlier, when no one in the United States would insure me at this time last year because of sleep apnea, I had only one option: Kentucky Access. This is part of the Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan, made available by Obamacare. 

According to www.healthcare.gov: 


"Coverage for people living with such conditions as diabetes, asthma, cancer and HIV/AIDS has often been priced out of the reach of most Americans who buy their own insurance, and this has resulted in a denial of coverage for millions. The Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan is designed to address these challenges by offering comprehensive coverage at a reasonable cost." (Italics, mine.)

Note the word, "reasonable."

You ever hear the expression, "It's all relative?" "Reasonable" to one person may be incomprehensible to someone else, in that case, me. I've been told by a lot of people (who have insurance plans, by the way) that my health care premium and deductible are "reasonable." But compared to what I've had in the past, you might as well gouge my bank account every month. In fact, that's what happens.

The cheapest premium available to me under Kentucky Access, under my particular age group, is $503 per month. My annual deductible is $1,500. After that, I receive coverage for 80 percent of the costs of any medical treatment. (So, for example, if I had emergency surgery that cost $100,000, I would still be responsible for $20,000, after my deductible is met.)

As a self-employed contractor who is paid by the word for the stories I write, I've been able to keep up with the premium every month. Having said that, I'm now a single mother, and my living expenses are solely on my back. To take $503 out of my account every month, just so that I can have coverage if I need it? Well, let's just say that there have been at least a dozen times I've almost cancelled the policy. The only thing that has stopped me is my late father's words of advice: "Always have health insurance, no matter what you have to do to get it."

Now, if I add my child onto my policy, I'm looking at around $800 a month to cover the both of us.

And you know what? I just couldn't afford it. Around this time last year, I sat at my dining room table with a calculator for hours, trying to figure out what costs I could cut out of my regular living expenses. By the end of that exercise, I was in a heap, with my head on the table and my forearms covered in tears.

This left me with one other option. It was the last thing on earth I wanted to do. I can honestly tell you that besides the day my father passed away, the day I made this decision was one of the darkest moments of my life:

I went to the local public welfare office to apply for the children's medical program, three days before Christmas. 

It was horrible.

Tune in for the next part of the story of Mission Impossible: Health Insurance.

For more information about coverage for people with pre-existing medical conditions, see http://www.healthcare.gov/news/factsheets/2010/07/preexistingconditioninsuranceplan.html

Then the Charlatans Came Calling

Within 24 hours of being turned down by every health insurer in the United States, telemarketers started calling me. They offered plans for people like me, they said, who couldn't get "traditional insurance."


I actually bought one of these plans, after a 45-minute phone conversation with someone who sounded like Santa Claus (he even chuckled in that grandfatherly way). But the next day, I recalled the adage, "If it sounds too good to be true ..."


So I called the Attorney General's Consumer Division for the state of Kentucky, which is where I live. Having covered news for The Associated Press, I knew that these fellas would tell me straight up if I'd been suckered.


"I hate to tell you this," said a nice lawyer on the other end of the phone, "but that policy you bought isn't worth the paper it's printed on. Tell them that you've talked to us. If they don't refund your money immediately, call me back -- and tell them you'll get us involved, too."


Ironically (or maybe not so ironically), when I called the 800 number again, I received the same elderly gentleman who'd sold me the policy. When I shared what the AG's office told me, it was as if he'd undergone a Jekyll-Hyde personality change. "They can't tell people things like that!" he yelled into the receiver.


I advised him that I was a former AP reporter and that it was the job of each state Attorney General's office to protect consumers. Then I added my one-two punch. "The lawyer with whom I spoke advised me to ask for a full refund. If you're unable to give it to me, I'm to call him back."


Silence.


Within a couple of hours, my credit card had been refunded, and my policy was cancelled.


In this case, I'm luckier than most people. Because of my profession, I knew the ropes and the people to call. But I also realized with a shudder that I'm an anomaly. How many thousands of people in my situation were getting hoodwinked?


Meanwhile, I was still facing my dilemma -- how to find health insurance when no one would sell it to me. I researched the changes to the national health care law, to discover that my child could get insurance from Kentucky if I fell within certain income guidelines.


But the way things stood, until 2014, I was stuck with one option:


A plan called Kentucky Access.


And let me tell you, this thing did not come cheaply.


Tune in for the next part of the tale of Mission Impossible: Health Insurance.

When the Unthinkably Impossible Happened

I'm going through a divorce. So to keep this as simple as possible, given the pending status of my case, I will just leave it that at this time last year, health coverage ended. My child and I had been under the plan of my soon-to-be-ex-husband's employer, but that was terminated in November 2010.


I'm a self-employed contractor. I decided to shop around for a policy, albeit more expensive than what had been provided when I was under the same roof as my spouse.


I filled out the online applications at ehealthinsurance.com and waited for the best offers to come trickling in.


Then I sat in stunned silence on my sofa, as one email came in after another. Each and every company declined my application.  I decided to call ehealthinsurance.com and speak to a customer service representative. Surely something was wrong with the online software, I thought. It was probably a glitch. I fully expected that by night's end, I'd have a policy in place.


The girl on the other line clicked her keyboard as she looked up my application. Then there was no sound.


"Hello?"


"Yes, I'm still here."


"Oh, good, I thought I'd been cut off. So what's the situation?"


"You've been declined."


"Right, I know that, but it's just a software glitch, right? There's no reason I should be declined. Can the application be resubmitted?"


"No."


"No? No? Why not?"


"You have a life-threatening pre-existing condition. You were recently diagnosed with sleep apnea, right?"


"Sleep apnea. I snore. That's not going to kill me. I have a machine that blows air in my face, and it's been taken care of."


"It's a pre-existing condition, and it is life-threatening. Your heart stops when you sleep. I'm sorry, but no one is going to touch you."


"Wait a minute. You're saying I can't get insurance from anyone in the entire country?"


"That's right."


"Because I snore."


"That's correct."


OK, this was bad, but I knew my child was healthy.


"All right ... so let's get a policy for my 7-year-old son."


"You can't."


"I can't? Why can't I?"


"Because for him to get coverage, he has to be under a plan of an adult with coverage. You can't get coverage. So he can't get coverage."


I can't say for sure, but I'm pretty certain I started hyperventilating right there.


"You're telling me that my child -- my CHILD -- can't get health insurance BECAUSE I SNORE."


"I'm sorry, but yes, that's correct. Is there anything else I can help you with tonight?"


Was she serious?


"Anything else you can help me with, besides telling me that my child and I can't pay anyone any amount of money so that we can go to the doctor? No. There's nothing else you can 'help' me with, but thanks."


I hung up. And then ... you know that Bible verse that describes people being "thrown in utter darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth?"


Pretty much, that's where I was.