Taking care of Royal Busyness (...84)

Over the last week I became distracted by all the Royal Wedding business.  Last night while eating dinner I was channel flipping between “E,” “20/20” and another news show to see all the pomp and circumstance planned for today’s ceremony.  I taped the morning shows covering the live wedding and watched them at 9am for 3 hours.  It was perfect entertainment while I took care of business for the day.  Here’s what that covered:

Waiting for two plumbers to replace a pipe from which the entire building’s water supply was flowing freely into the basement out of a 6-inch hole.  This sounds worse than it turned out to be. 

 Clearing out and rearranging the shelves in my condo to make a space for my new printer and other supplies.  It's the start of a small at home office.  It won't look like a page from Real Simple with the ubiquitous magnetic containers of paper clips and tacks hanging on the mall. This will be more like a den of supplies I can pull out during the day and hide away at night.

Printing and filling out my COBRA application.  As interesting as it sounds.

Baking another loaf of bread (the 4th since I’ve been laid off).  The smell, the taste, and the bread-baking process are soooooooo pleasing to me.  And a soothing way to counteract laptop fatigue and hunger pangs.

After these little missions were complete, I took a walk in the sun to soak up desperately needed Vitamin D.  It was an unusually warm, 70 degree, gorgeous April day that made being laid off a little more tolerable.

Before and After (...88 days)

After a great one-hour run in the rain (lovely, not nasty rain), a cup of coffee, and some leftover Easter chocolate, I sat down to do some work.  It was the morning, so I was feeling energetic and optimistic about making a final decision on which health care option to choose.  This is in place of using my employer offered plan through COBRA.  The Massachusetts Health Connector website is surprisingly easy to navigate.  Eligibility requirements, available options, and the application process are clear.  But the options are dismal.  Any plans offering equivalent coverage to my current BCBS and dental plan cost nearly as much as COBRA ($635.58/month!).  If I choose a plan with a reduced monthly cost, the coverage is reduced as well.  It’s sickening to think about the choices I have to make with respect to my health. And, it makes the health care debate feel much more personal than it has prior to now.

Today, after assessing the options and potential costs, I’ve made some progress and narrowed my options to just two.  But it was not without penalty.  My energy from this morning has been sucked right out.  I probably look a lot less like the happy couple on the MAHC website, than I look like Edward and Bella from the Twilight series:  dark, surly, brooding.

Soon I’ll post the resources I’ve found or been given that have helped determine an alternate health care option to COBRA.

The Facts of Life (...94 days)

Starting on day one of being laid off I started receiving emails from colleagues.  They all express kind thoughts and offer to be a resource on the job search front.  I'm grateful that so many people have reached out to me through calls, emails, and text messages.  It's feels good to be checked in on me by people I respect and care about.   It's very thoughtful of them and I feel lucky to have a good network of people to rely on.

What I didn't expect in these emails, calls, and texts, or at least not quite so much of, was the level of shock and anger communicated to me about my layoff.  I was surprised, but not completely shocked.  We were already working with a reduced staff.  My department alone was down 2 people.  Elsewhere in the company whole departments were nearly shutdown.  It seemed possible any one of us could be the next to be let go.  I think the anger people are feeling is not so much about my personal situation but at the larger situation, in the company and in the nation.  The state of the economy, the healthcare debate, and the recent federal budget negotiations are making most people nervous.  And the closer to home it feels, the more fear and anger people begin to feel.

Financial security and healthcare is serious stuff!!  It defines our quality of life to a large extent.  And it's depressing to think about the lack of it.  My healthcare and dental plans will soon be continued via COBRA (Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act).  It will cost me $635.58 a month if I elect to enroll. While employed I payed $160 a month.  This is a remarkable change in my monthly expenses.  I can get by for a while paying for COBRA, but what if I were like one of my many former colleagues with a family?  For my same BCBS Network Blue and Dental plans, family coverage under cobra would cost $1533.97!  No wonder my former colleagues are expressing outrage.  They're terrified this burden will be imposed on them.