I hate the health insurance industry – but I’ll use mine for now.

Full disclosure: I despise the health insurance industry and would love to see it crumble.  Just so you know where I stand.

I could pen volumes about why I feel this way, but it’s easier for you to see Sicko, which covers many of my experiences.  These include my protesting bills for services explicitly covered by my plan and having said bills put into collection while I was doing so; having an insurance company representative pressure me to lie and file a workers comp claim for an accident that did not happen at work so the state could pay for it instead; having an x-ray of my foot but not my ankle covered when I had torn ligaments throughout my lower leg.  You see, the foot x-ray was “necessary” but the ankle one was not. Isn’t it amazing how insurance companies can know all of this, when they weren’t in the ER with you and never contacted the ER doctor?

In addition, health insurance companies influence the amount of time doctors spend with patients – at present, they want doctors to spend about six to ten minutes with patients. This boils my blood: Insurance companies are not doctors. They have no business telling doctors how much time to spend with patients, period.

For these reasons and so many others, I was planning to go the “no insurance” route that my friend recently has. She sees a doctor who flat-out does not accept insurance, even if you have insurance coverage. The doctor made this change a few years ago because she felt that, if she continued to accept insurance, she would no longer be able to provide the quality of service she does (longer appointments, all work done by the doctor instead of a nurse practitioner or assistant, etc.). And, according to my friend and a few other acquaintances, she’s the best doctor ever. My friend has never had a better, higher quality experience.

This higher quality experience will cost you, however.  In principle, I want the same quality of care and would love to support a doctor who’s cutting out insurance companies. Doing so means that my appointment would cost me $350 out of pocket, none of which would have been paid by insurance or reimbursed later.

With all of the debt I need to pay off this year, I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. Frankly, $350 is a nice payment toward the credit card or in savings. In addition, I pay for health insurance out of every single paycheck. If I’m paying for it, I should use it.

So, I made an appointment with Man’s doctor, who accepts our insurance plan. But I didn’t really make an appointment with the doctor, because she wasn’t available until October. Since I need to have my annual physical soon, I can’t wait until October. Instead, I was given an appointment next week with a nurse practitioner (NP), who will do my entire annual physical. Every other practice I called was no longer accepting new patients – and I didn’t call the ons with bad online reviews.

I don’t have an issue with NPs. I know several nurses personally and they’re almost synonymous with “doctor” in my mind. I do find this situation an interesting quality trade-off, though, in a couple of ways.  First, the NP is doing the work of a doctor but isn’t get paid nearly as much as a doctor (I asked).  In order to get an appointment soon at a place that accepts my insurance plan, I had to “settle” for not seeing a doctor and having an NP do everything. The “office” will just renew my current birth control and allergy prescriptions. No one will speak with me to see if I’m having problems, decide if having prescriptions renewed is the best idea or not, or anything.

Here’s a whole new reason to pay off debt: So I can afford better-quality health care and not be beholden to what my insurance company dictates.

Say a little prayer for me…

After a $700 payment last week, my credit card debt is now at $7,660. I am hell bent on getting it below the $7,000 mark with my next payment. In two months, it has gone from $9,000 to $7,660.

I also paid off all of my Spring 2007 tuition (which was $4,000 in May) with my last payment of $675.  I spent nearly all of my savings ($3,000) to pay this bill, but if I hadn’t done so I couldn’t have registered for dissertation credits this fall.

I also have $3,040 sitting in my savings account waiting for my triennial property tax assessment. It’s a strange thing, in that (especially with a recently remodeled property like mine) I have no idea what my taxes will be assessed at. Looking around the area, however, $3,000 seems realistic, so here’s hoping it’s enough…

Refinancing my second mortgage (currently at an abominable 11.35%) is a primary 2007 goal of mine, and I came one step closer to meeting that goal today! The notary public came to my apartment (talk about good service from Placer Title) this morning and I signed all of the papers one normally signs at a closing. It wasn’t officially my closing, and I don’t know when that will be or what form it will take, but I know I don’t need to go anywhere and I’ve (so far) done everything I need to do. It’s so close!

I also wrote a check for $300 of my $520 in past due assessments. This sounds bad, as if I just flat-out didn’t pay them, but that’s not the case. Late last year and early this year, my newly redeveloped condo building was in transition from the developer to a new management company, which needed to be selected by our association, and our condo association was forming at the same time. So, for a few months, no one really knew the correct party to pay. I could have planned for it better, but I’ll take care of the rest in the next couple of weeks. My assessments are now deducted automatically on the 10th of each month.

Fail again. Fail better.

My favorite undergraduate professor had that Beckett quotation pasted to a wall, and I’m reminded of it today. I’ve had some spending failures in the past week… though that language is inaccurate. I did quite fine at spending, and failed at saving.

I briefly returned to a literally lifelong bad habit (if I ever truly got away, which is doubtful) of “beauty crap buying”, in this case make-up at Whole Foods ($50 in mineral stuff and a $4 lip gloss), followed by $60 on one Jane Iredale foundation ($50) and a $10 shampoo. This was followed by $13 on Paul Mitchell product I absolutely did not need at the cosmetology school after a hair cut. That’s more than $100 total. Which could have bought…

The $90 Betsey Johnson dress I found at the Rack last night (which I feel OK about, in the weird psychology of economics, because I so rarely buy clothing, and hey, it’s Betsey Johnson, and hey, it wasn’t $500 like the Betsey Johnson boutique items one block from my apartment). See how marvelously I can rationalize?

I am going to attempt to return to my hardcore, no-beauty-crap budget rule to which I was so intent on adhering a couple of months ago: I am NOT allowed to buy any beauty products until they are gone (well, gone or gone bad, like mascara every few months). Speaking of which, I bought two-for-one Cover Girl mascara at Rite Aid, most likely out of guilt for that Jane Iredale foundation.

I also probably spent too much on Man’s birthday present – $250 all told, but I wanted something special. And it wouldn’t have been an issue if I’d actually budgeted for it.

So I failed again. I’m failing better at bringing lunch to work. I ate grocery-store dinner last night and made lunch for today (turkey chili for Man and I), and Man and I brought egg salad from home on two days last week.

I’ve also failed better by canceling the lovely, deluxe house cleaning service at $120 every two weeks ($120-$240/month), and I’ve started doing my laundry for “free” at Man’s house instead of spending quarters on it at my apartment or at Bluewater Laundry, which is still pretty reasonable at $31/huge bag (vs. $45/huge bag at the wash-and-fold down the street).

The most difficult behavioral modification of all, which I have now kept up for three weeks is… I have truly and officially stopped buying coffee in the morning and I wait to have the coffee in the kitchen at work, which is excellent organic brew. It’s getting easier. Having coffee at work is now a habit; the converse of the original is now true. The first two weeks were hell and required active resistance, a declared boycott by Man (who doesn’t even drink coffee) and me to NOT turn and walk into the many coffee shops that litter the path to work.

Don’t get me wrong. I LOVE the laundry service (you really should use www.bluewaterlaundry.com if you live in San Francisco) and I LOVE my super clean house but… I need the money more. Sorry, local businesses I love.

Best of all: My mortgage application has been approved! This is to refinance my second mortgage (which is currently at a whopping and unnecessary fixed rate of 11.35% for a 7-year term). My new one will, if all goes well, be with my credit union at 7.5% for 15-year-fixed. That’s huge at 3.75% difference. Refinancing to get rid of that awfully high interest rate is a huge goal of mine for this year. I also wanted to do it without closing costs and it looks like I will: My credit union doesn’t charge ANY closing costs for amounts under $100,000. I only have to pay a $150 application fee, well worth a 3.75% rate reduction.

I’ve also started pestering about my hiring bonus for WorkFriend ($1,500 before taxes, all of which will go to pay off my credit card). Paperwork has been completed and I should see it soon.

Failing better,

Penny