The health team at your local facility does an excellent job of repairing the damage. Soon, you’re back home recuperating. But there’s an additional shock to the system yet to come – that happens when you receive the bill from the hospital.
While bills for hospital treatment are high (and in-hospital care is even higher), you’re confident that your insurance will cover a good portion of the costs. Confident, that is, until you make a phone call and discover that your health insurance lapsed just before your accident.
That, of course, is the very definition of a disaster.
Despite the best precautions of the massive insurance and medical system, new government regulations that mandate that everyone carry health insurance, and constant warnings from friends, family and acquaintances about the need for such insurance, there are still people who find themselves caught in the gap between insurance and no insurance.
Some of it is simple negligence on the part of the individual. They may have been distracted by work and their personal lives, and didn’t notice the bill piling up on the counter. Or they may be waiting for a check to arrive that will pay the fees, but forget to pay it when the ship comes in.
Sometimes the mistake can be the result of human errs. Insurance companies and human resource departments are manned by people (really, they are!), and people make mistakes. If the proper paperwork wasn’t filed, you may have fallen through the cracks and wound up without insurance for a time.