Health Insurance - Preexisting Conditions

July 19, 2007 5:40 PM

I'm trying to find out the best option for my uninsured mother-in-law's upcoming visit which will most likely involve some doctor's visits.

She has a non-life threatening chronic illness, which at the moment has fairly frequent flare ups. These are controllable, but she's not handling it very well at the moment - she seems to be getting fairly depressed and my wife is extremely concerned. She's been seeing doctors in Mexico (she doesn't speak English all that well) and some US doctors in California, both for the chronic illness and the depression, and the general consensus from everyone is she needs a change of scenery to help with the depression. We're in Washington state, Redmond specifically, so I'd like to find out what the best option to minimize medical bills would be if she did need to see a doctor while she was here.

I've been looking at some health insurance and it looks like there's upwards of 8 months waiting for preexisting conditions, but reading some other askmefi questions it looks like even if they don't pay at least having the insurance may allow us to pay the contracted rates which are a lot more palatable.

Alternately, does anyone know of practices around here that will take uninsured patients at reasonable rates? I've found lists of some of the emergency care ones but I don't really want to use these as they look like they're mostly targeted towards homeless / HIV+ etc, we don't want to take up resources that I'm sure are in extremely limited supply if we can avoid it.

So, purchase 'cheap' ($500 / year) health insurance or wing it and hope for the best?

posted by mikw to Health & Fitness (2 answers total)

Best answer: I used to be on the board of the 45th Street Clinic and it's a totally okay place to take your MiL. They specifically have mental health providers and a focus on wellness and can give you appropriate referrals that will be considerate to your Mom's income level and compounding health issues. I like them a lot, they are decent people and give good quality health care. I used to go there myself for all my OBGYN needs when I was in Seattle.

You might also want to look into the Country Doctor which is further South and closer to where you are. If she's going to be staying with you for a long time you might want to try getting her signed up for WA State Basic Health which has income guidelines but is otherwise totally decent insurance. I dont know much about their preexisting condition rules however.
posted by jessamyn at 5:52 PM on July 19, 2007

Response by poster: Thanks jessamyn, excellent info as always.

cheers
posted by mikw at 10:19 PM on July 19, 2007