health care

[glowbelly]

how many of you are insured?

i'm not and i'm pregnant. i've looked into every single possible option, and my best one is to cut down the hours i am working at my job so i can qualify for welfare. in doing so, i will not be able to marry my baby's father and cannot save as much money as i wanted to for after the baby is born.

here's my dilemma:

i haven't been insured since i lost my job in may of 2003. i was offered continuation benefits through cobra, but had no way to pay for them. i considered getting an individual policy, but again, had a problem with the money. i enrolled in school and failed to realize that they had insurance available. i was going to apply for the student insurance in the summer ('04), but was told that i couldn't because i wasn't enrolled for that semester...i would have to wait until the fall semester, which starts on august 28. i found out i was pregnant about 2 weeks ago, and now the school insurance is calling my pregnancy pre-existing. fine.

i started a job with a temp agency working for a company. they have 3 months to try me out before they can decide to hire me full time. i'm not even sure if their health insurance includes maternity benefits. if it doesn't, i'm back to square one. then again, if it does, they can't hire me on full time until december. *sigh*

i looked into open enrollment. haha. $1,144.85 A MONTH. yeah right.

so now my only choice is to cut back on my hours here at this job or find another job that pays me less, so i can go on welfare. i won't be able to marry brian, because then we'll have too much income for one family (even though the only option i have for insurance would eat up almost his entire income for the month). it's insanity. true, true insanity. and it makes me really, super sad.

and don't anyone give me any shit about how i should have thought about this before i got knocked up. i'm well aware that this is not planned well, and i've come to terms with it, so STUFF IT.