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Between the cracks is a frightening place to be.
During the course of trying to improve our family’s financial stability, my husband and I were blind-sided by one hidden detail: We’d face $10,000 in costs to continue my husband’s serious medical treatment because we found ourselves unexpectedly without coverage for 30 days.
This was money we simply did not have. We had been prepared to foot the full bill for good health insurance, but that wasn’t even an option, thanks to the circumstances of our career transitions and my husband’s health.
I was leaving my job of 10 years to begin a satisfying new position that came with excellent health care coverage. It was a beneficial move that would offset my husband’s impending loss of insurance as his employer downsized and prepared to go out of business. We knew the end result, but we didn’t know the timing. It just so happened that his coverage ended the same month that I began my new job, leaving a gap of one month before my new coverage would begin.
With this routine employment-benefits formality before us, we knew we’d have to purchase coverage. We had hoped to buy a Cadillac COBRA plan, given the circumstances that require very expensive care. But we learned that an out-of-business employer is not obligated to offer COBRA, and our plan to continue the same level of coverage at our expense was not available.
