I work as a healthcare provider in the outpatient setting. We do general medicine. Our office has stayed open for our patients during the pandemic and as expected, we have seen and taken care of a fair number of covid cases (usually mild, not requiring hospitalization ). I think this is our duty and I’m happy we are doing it.
Recently- I needed to have bloodwork done. This essentially led me to discover that I did not have health insurance. I had lost my insurance in January in fact.
How did this happen? I signed up in October after starting my new job. I verified and made sure - indeed my coverage had started in November. Here’s where things went wrong : my employer was changing the company providing our insurance and before the new year started, everyone had to sign up. The conversation I had w the HR person assigned to me made me believe I had registered both for my insurance starting in November as well as in January. Or that the one for Nov rolled over to the next year. I’m sure it was a misunderstanding —but that’s how I remember it. Therefore any emails sent saying “please sign up” .... well I thought I was ok.
I honestly thought that if something like this ever happened - someone would notice and reach out to make sure I was covered somehow.
The organization I work for takes good care of their patients and they monitor everyone’s work very closely, including my own. This is something well known - they go above and beyond to do so because it holds people accountable and motivates productivity. I have received calls if I didn’t complete X or Y within the time allotted or if I didn’t attend/ sign into a meeting. Sometimes I’m not even sure how they do it.
During a pandemic ... it would have been nice to have had someone give me a call about my lack of health insurance.
I’m focussing on covid but ofc other things could happen too. Not having health insurance is a common problem however - so I’m in no way unique . What concerns me right now is that in doing my job , I’m putting myself at risk and could very easily get sick. I’m happy to take that risk normally but I don’t want to drive my family into bankruptcy if I end up needing the hospital.
I’m just very disappointed. I know I may have misunderstood and should’ve checked earlier - but the repercussions of not doing so seem quite harsh.
This is my first job so I don’t know if this is just normal. No one at work seemed phased when I mentioned this. Can anyone give me insight?
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