Bureaucracy's Earache

Has there been any worse time of the month than the first and last? A pain in my ear, literally. Allow me to outline the last few weeks:

We found out that we could not afford the group coverage that we were utilizing through Spencer's company, so we decided to hunt around for indivdiual coverage. We found some reasonable prices through a group affiliated with AHDI, the professional organziation I'm a member of as a medical transcriptionist. No problem. Well, it was a bit hard to get a hold of my agent, so it took longer than usual to get all the paperwork, go through all the rules and plans, and pick the ones that were best for us. Needless to say, since the cheapest options with decent coverage were far between, I ended up putting our entire family on indvidual plans. Why should my husband have to pay for maternity coverage? Duh.

Fast forward to the end of September. It's almost time to cancel our existing coverage, and I'm having issues filling out paperwork. So we decide that, instead of risking the insurance company not honoring our requested effective date of October 1, we decided to get short-term coverage for October just to bridge the gap.

Then, I called the insurance company to check the status of our short-term coverage, in case we needed to see a doctor (like me. As sure as clockwork, I developed a strange fullness/ache in my ear mere hours before October 1.) I called Blue Cross of CA and was told that my husband and child were approved, but not me. Why? I had a claim. I went to the doctor to get a simple cyst checked out in September, and deeming me too high risk for short term coverage, I was denied.

So now I sit here, frantically filling out my own paperwork so that my husband can fax my paperwork first, and pray that we're not at the mercy of the insrance company if they do not approve my October 1 effective date. Not to mention that all my prescription medications will be fully out of pocket this month.

Why am I being punished for proactively taking care of myself? It's not like I have AIDS or diabetes or hepatitis C, or even over the age of 30. I am a low-risk patient by all means, and yet I'm being forced to hope for the best while my request for long-term coverage is being processed. Is the lesson "don't go to your doctor if you're switching insurance?" Because that is ridiculous. What if I was fired from a job and had to scramble for insurance, and ended up with pneumonia or a respiratory infection that required antibiotics? This isn't a chronic condition, and yet I'm being treated as if I have one.