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To get insurance or not?

Started by Vicki, March 16, 2014, 11:21:38 AM

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Vicki

Hello all!

I know I haven't been on here since I made my very dramatic breakdown of moving to Alaska. However, I've had an eventful month - I recently joined a transgender support group in my area and I've really been looking into getting this transition process started. I haven't really started therapy yet, but the leader of my support group advised me that he would email me a list of known trans friendly doctors and therapist in the area. Just somewhat waiting on that to figure out where to go and what to do.

Currently, I'm looking to go back to school and I noticed that they offer an insurance plan for their students. I know for a fact that I will be attending school at the University and would be eligible to have the insurance plan tacked on to my tuition bill, which I should be able to swing with my current job. I would be picking this up to primarily offset the doctor's office bills, therapy, and HRT (ideally). My only question is, would it be cheaper for me to pick up the insurance plan or to just set back the money and pay for everything out of pocket? If it's of any help at all, the University offers some information on the health care plan here:

http://www.uaf.edu/chc/student-health-insurance/
http://www.uaf.edu/chc/UnivAlaskaFairbanks_welcome_email.pdf

My primary concerns are that this would not be inclusive of transgender issues, but I haven't had enough dealing with insurance companies to know if they would cover those kind of issues. Any help or advise is much appreciated :)
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Mariah

"Students taking 9 or more credits during Fall or Spring semesters: you are REQUIRED to carry some form of medical insurance coverage. There is no current requirement for students attending Summer Sessions but it is highly encouraged."

So if you are taking more than 9hrs, you will need some form of insurance. As for the school insurance, if you can get everything through the Student Health and Counseling Center it looks to be like this: Meds would probably be $10 each assuming Tier 1 is generic meds. So assuming everything can be taken care of at the center its around $2387/year or so including annual fee. If you can't get these things at the Student Health and Counseling Center, it becomes blurry. Seems to be 20% out of pocket if you are in-network and "$300 Deductible for each Injury or Sickness. $600 Deductible for all Insureds in a Family, Per Policy Year." Not exactly sure if it means $300/visit up to $600/year??? So it could be around $3250 assuming about 6 doctor visits with labs and everything is in-network.

Not going to say what is best for you, just look around and see what is available because there is a lot more to insurance plans than hrt.
If you have any questions, please feel free to ask me.
[email]mariahsusans.orgstaff@yahoo.com[/email]
I am also spouse of a transgender person.
Retired News Administrator
Retired (S) Global Moderator
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kathyk

It really looks like you're going to have to contact the Health Center and Diversity office over at UAF again and talk to them about specifics in coverage under the Health Center's insurance plan.  Like Mariah said the covered items are not entirely clear so they probably get several questions a year about trans care.  And in reading browsing through it quickly the UAF insurance doesn't seem to cover a whole lot that you'd other than standard counseling services and general practice medical appointments.  But maybe that's all you want as long they write prescriptions on an outside therapists recommendation. But remember, full sets of lab work can be really expensive, so consider those costs into everything and double check what the university staff say about it all.   

If you look outside for insurance be careful about buying into one of the low cost Obama Care plans because many of them require you to pay as much as $5,000 in deductibles before any insurance coverage kicks in.  You could essencially pay your entire premium for insurance, and then still pay all your medical costs for the year and never receive a dime through the insurance plan.  The law definitely is not trans friendly.  It's really a legalized insurance scam that used to be called predatory, but is now mandated under the Care Act that congress passed for the President to sign into law.  None of those idiots in congress read what they approved, and they didn't seem to care.  Nancy Pelosi actually said the bill had to be passed before you could find out what's in it.  Kind of like pulling the trigger on a gun to see if there's a cartridge in it.





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