And with a simple phone call this morning my calm evaporated. I got a note a couple months back stating that my insurance was getting bought out and going away, but all services would be the same. I still did my due diligence at the time to make sure that was the case, and thought it was. But SC has a stupid law about if you want to use midwives you have to have two appointments with an OB to "approve" going to them. The legislative babysitting drives me insane. Well, that OB, the only OB any of the midwives go to, because where I live is incredibly underserved for midwifery care, and the OBs won't help partner with them, applied to that new insurance and they rejected their office. I didn't think to call them to check. It wouldn't have mattered anyway because I couldn't change and keep my midwife.
So I spent two hours this morning talking to multiple different places trying to find someone that will take the new insurance and also do that second OB visit I need to satisfy SC law. I finally found someone who should work. And I'll be driving an hour and a half to get to them. Ridiculous! And they were kind of punky about it.
I kind of want to say screw all of them. I chose my method of birth because it's what is best for me and my baby. I don't live close enough to a hospital to use my preferred provider without having significant risk of having my baby in the car. Last go around the hospital sent me home because they didn't believe I was in active labor, and I had Aaron 30 minutes after rushing back since transition started ten minutes after I arrived home from being sent home. So just pay for the services already and think of what's best for the health of me and my child, not what is the mainstream normal method! I hate, hate, hate, hate, hate dealing with insurance companies. And don't get me started on how I'm still up in the air waiting for services to be covered for Spencer too.
I don't even know if my midwife services will be covered now. I do have a letter that promises they will. I talked to her and she's like, well, we'll work something out if they can't pay. Awesome. That's code words for we'll put together a payment plan for you to pay the rest like you're self-pay. I have no doubt I will be fighting them about it for months after I have the baby. I'm so incredibly ticked about all this. I can't imagine the amount of tension bottled up in me right now is particularly good for my current state of health. But I have a really strong desire to start throwing punches at several different parties. Messing with the 9-month pregnant girl just isn't a good choice, folks.
But the worst part, I'm stuck. I will be fighting with insurance. Likely I will be paying more for my birth than has been planned for the last six months. Of course we'll make it work. No, I don't need to be bailed out. I just hate it all. I hate being in an income bracket where I have to deal with the Medicaid crap and don't really have another option. I hate how broken the medical industry is. I hate that my choices are severely limited because the state legislature is a bunch of idiots who are scared of maternal care that is mainstream in every other country in the world. I kind of want them all to burn. And mostly I just want to be past all of this. Past having the baby, past paying for whatever all this will take, past grad school, past wondering where the heck we're going to get a job and where we're going to move and the sheer uncertainty of life for the last few years and at least the next one or two more. I'm so ready to get to a point where we can pay off our debt, start putting money away, have some peace of mind about our forward motion. Some days just feel really crappy when I think about the actual situation we're in. This suddenly became one of them.
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