Unsure About Insurance

I paid my monthly insurance fee today and it reminded me that I wrote a little piece about my insurance adventures when I first got here. I didn't post it right away since I was kind of not really at my happiest at the moment and didn't want to post anything that would sound bitter. I wanted to wait a couple of days and as you know it turned into a couple of weeks and so on, but here you have it anyway (or what's happened so far at least):

Before I came here I knew that I needed to have an insurance while here. It is one of the requirements in my DS-2019, which is the paper that allows my stay in the US. (No, my visa is not THE paper, the DS-2019 is. Not kidding.)

I knew that I needed to have an insurance. And I knew that it needed to be comparable to the University of Michigan Health Insurance Plan. Otherwise I'd have to enroll in the U-M Helth Insurance Plan. Which is not overly cheap.

Now, normally I'd be covered by an insurance from my work place: the University of Helsinki. But this year as it happens I'm not really working at my work place, I'm on a scholarship. So I'm not insured. Well, of course Kari is nice and promises that my insurance costs will be covered by some project or another. However, this is not actually possible since it is not techically possible to put insurance bills to the Travel Expences Report in our new WebTraveller Software since all the employees of the University on Helsinki are already covered by the university's own insurance. Except for me and a couple of thousand other people on scholarships of course.

So I set out to acquire my own private insurance. I already have one normal travel insurance (my union insurance) in Pohjola, so I call to Pohjola. There is a very nice and helpful lady on the other line. She starts by selling me a new travel luggage insurance which she says would be much more profitable - "Sinun kannattaa ehdottomasti vaihtaa tähän toiseen" - for me (I later realize that it is actually much more expensive).

She also sells me an extension to my old insurance. The old insurance namely only covers trips shorter than three months. I of course ask her if it will be good enough for the University of Michigan and I explain my situation. She says that there couldn't possibly be anything more that they could ask for. My insurance has no upper limits for any coverage and it quite simply is the best insurance one could buy. I don't really feel reassured but I also really don't have any time to explore the situation further so I buy the insurance and hope for the best.

Now you've of course already guessed that everything didn't quite go as planned. After my mandatory Check In Program in the University of Michigan I have a chance to go and see the Health Insurance Coordinator in the International Office and present all the documents that I have brought with me. I have copies of my insurance card, the official Certificate of Insurance in English from Pohjola, for which I paid 5 euros to get, and a form from the International Office which I have carefully filled out. I'm certain that this is not all that will be needed and say as much to the officer, who is very nice and asks to see what I do have.

He looks at my Certificate of Insurance. And as he reads along, he comments on it: “Well, I'm pretty sure this will not be good enough for us but let's see anyway”, “We would require more on this point here”, “Hhmm, I'm not happy about this point here where it says...”, “Well, we don't mind there being...”, “Now, I would need more specific information about this part here”, and so on. He is really helpful. He explains all the points for which he'd need specification. He says that I should sent their form to be filled out by my insurance company. He wonders weather I'm not already paying more than what their insurance would cost for all this.

So the next day I call to Pohjola again. The answer is firm: Pohjola does not sing forms from other companies. They'd never know what they are signing into. I also ask about the details. It turns out that it wouldn't be possible to buy such an insurance from Finland. As an example the U-M Insurance Plan requires coverange for pregnancy. But my insurance only covers complications in pregnancy. You see, pragnancy is not an accident. Apparently. And a travel insurance only covers accidents. And that's it.

Well, technically I'm not really being fair here. The U-M doesn't really need Pohjola to fill in their form, a letter stating all the points in the form would suffice. But one can kind of guess what that letter would lead into. There would be again some wording which would be ambiguous and they'd need confirmation on that and it would go on forever.

So I gave up. And now I have two insurances. Why didn't I cancel my Finnish one then? I could have done it. But the thing is that my Finnish insurance is actually way better in many ways. For example there are no upper limits for anything. And there are upper limits in the U-M one. Basically, if you get a small bill or a really huge bill, they'll pay it but of an average bill you have to pay a big chunk.

And now I'm braking the basic rule of insuring that I learned from my friend just before I came here: Never have two insurances for the same thing at the same time. Because in the end if something happens, you'll never see any money since the insurance companies will fight till the end of the world for who really has to pay the bill.

And let's hope that's all the whining you'll get.