Any healthcare navigators here?

[Ms. Toad]

24. The separate policy doesn't make sense to me either.

They tried to pull that on us once, and I made them back down. But the reason was different.

There are 3 of us - same gender couple and daughter. Putting us on separate policies (our daughter and I on one, and my spouse on another) increased our out of pocket expenses by 50%, since we had a $6000 deductible on the "family" policy and an additional $3000 on my spouse's policy, instead of a $6000 maximum for the family. The company intended to offer family coverage, but had apparently not thought through the practical details of what it might mean (potentially double the out of pocket - if we had had 2 children, with each one biologically related to one of us). They were trying to avoid recoding their software (which required a gender for every family member, and wasn't set up to handle same gender couples). Their solution (which was the same identical cost for an adult only family) was just issue 2 separate policies. With kids in the mix, it dramatically increased our costs.

They did a work-around for the first year, and had rewritten the software for the state by the second year. Either they had never encountered a same gender family with children before - or the others all accepted, "Be thankful your family is covered at all," which was their first response. My response was, "no." and send me to the person who is your supervisor, and their supervisor, etc. I should check and see if my kindergarten report card said I played well with others...I suspect not.