Sally

I thought you paid into the NHS but didn't use it?

Surely your wife as an American citizen knew the score and could break it to you gently???

blaze

If medical works anything like dental in this country then she should be covered under the husbands insurance.

AdobePinon

Like he said:
I've heard of this before, but I've never encountered anyone who actually ran into this problem.

ladygwennie

It sounds as if she had ins beforehand tho, as he mentions her having a doctor, what happened to that insurance? Once they insured her if it was on his policy, there shouldn't be an issue..

angelman

to clarify somewhat..
both my wife and i work in good jobs, my job being better paid than hers.
my company offers excellent health insurance.. well apparently its one of the better ones.
However the big caveat with my insurance is that if my wife is offered insurance through her job then she is not allowed to take my insurance as her primary insurance.
It works at present because her previous employer who at the time of last years enrollment she was technically working for did not offer her insurance for her particular salary/experience level. She then got a new job which did offer insurance (the current job with the crappy insurance). I guess technically we should have told my insurance company but then she would have lost her health insurance with my insurance company.
So now is the new year, her current job still offers their crappy insurance and my insurance company has sent us a letter asking us to state whether she is still not being offered insurance by her employer which she is.
we could lie and say she is not working, the employer could lie and say they do not offer insurance or we tell the truth and my wife lose her current doctor and then we have to pay a huge % of the costs.

Its a real dilemma and something so alien to me. The idea that my wife has to quit her job in order to have a baby. This is of course an exageration but in a way not far from the truth. People have said how one should be able to choose a doctor, enjoy pregnancy but as far as I can see its just a nightmare and a tremendous stress on everyone, not the actual event just dealing with the insurance company.
My brief run in with the health insurance people so far has been unbelievably/criminally awful. So the idea of having a baby here is not very pleasant at all. But it looks like we have no choice sadly.

ladygwennie

What INS company are you covered under? Before you think about lieing, i would make sure you know any consequences, as any claims could well be denied and you would owe money anyway. It is a bad situation and maybe you should look at different options on how much it would cost to get her own good medical ins (if it would be better than her quitting her job). Otherwise check out the crappy ins properly and see what the costs are etc. Wish you best of luck!

scrubbedexpat099

Simple solution would be to get her to renegotiate her contract so she is not entitled to Insurance Cover, her employer should be delighted to do so.

I take it that she is not a UKC, residency is a state of mind, you go back, you say you are a returning resident, you may or may not change your mind in the future.

The issues I have seen are those from people who have stated they are not UK resident, quite why anybody would do that I have no idea.

I believe I am still on my Doctors rolls, certainly have not done anything to take myslef off.

And it will be quite a few years before I reach the current longest gap between visits to the surgery.

Jerseygirl

I am getting a little confused here. You say you have good jobs...therefore I presume good salaries...but expect UK citizens/taxpayers to pay for your USC wife's healthcare. Your wife is a USC...surely she should be familiar with the healthcare system in her own county.

scrubbedexpat097

I still don't see the problem. If you had signed your wife up on to your insurance that would have been her "secondary" insurance. She could have kept her own insurance and even if it had been "crappy" at least your insurance would have picked up a lot of the unpaid parts of the bill from her primary insurance.

If your wife is a USC surely she knows how insurance works here.

Another thought: lots of insurances do not cover maternity benefits or you have to have a different policy to cover for pregnancies. Did you check this out before hand?

You say you have good jobs, well bite the bullet man. Pay for what you are getting. Most OB's will set up a payment plan during the pregnancy and can usually figure out what will be due when the insurance has coughed up there amount. This is just a start......kids are an ongoing expense if you are in the UK or the US

ladygwennie

Well said

Hiro11

I've never heard of that particular contingency. I can understand if your wife had accepted insurance through her employer that your insurer wouldn't "double cover" her, but being denied coverage simply because her employer offers insurance? That seems fishy to me.

Of course I could be completely wrong. If I am, your company has a fairly terrible benefits policy.

scrubbedexpat099

I can think of an analogy, some health schemes do not pay what you could have had covered if you had taken out the maximum Health Cover available through your Auto Insurance.

A little known fact.

This applies to CO, probably elsewhere.

Manc

double coverage is actually a bad thing.

if you're covered by 2 companies, and they both know about each other, in any claim they'll both pay half, but each sting you for a deductible.

angelman

the insurance co is the motion pictures health guys, anyone in the movies and in a union has it. I wish it were true that this contingency does not exist but it is quite clear. My insurance will cover secondary items such as dental and vision but NOT hospital/doctors etc. for working spouses who have insurance OFFERED with their job. Other co workers of my wife were in similar situations with spouses in the movies.
Of course my wife is only too well aware of the horrible health system here. She was in debt for many years as a student having to pay $10K because she fell over in a bathroom which happened to be very close to cedars sinai th e most expensive hospital in la and the closest the ambulance could take her.. and she wasnt insured.. another story

However its still something of a shock for me this whole business here. Trying to deal with the insurance companies is such a nightmare. I cant understand how they can be so opaque.

As for biting the bullet and paying for this thing well we may have to. I think that for my wife at least the main issue is not the money even but that her current doctor who she is very very happy with (and she is very fussy) will no longer be able to treat her if she moves to her school's insurance. This is quite a big deal when you are pregnant I believe especially when you have people poking around downstairs its important to have someone you trust.
The scary thing with the money aspect is just how much it costs. I mean even if you have a decent job its so easy to rack up tens of thousands of dollars. Had I been uninsured it would have cost me over $2000 for them to look at my sprained wrist, xray it and just bandage it, the wait time was easily the same as most NHS hospitals. Like I said people in England do not know how lucky they are I think.

We could take our own insurance but I have no idea how that works. Would they accept an asthmatic 3 months pregnant, surely they would charge enormous premiums?

I may be very naive about the whole situation back home since I havent been to the doctor or been sick for about 15 years or and have never had a pregnancy. Maybe I just imagine some utopia where everything is free!

As for expecting to use UK services for my USC wife. Well of course I dont expect anything, it was more just a long shot idea really. I dont really understand know how the NHS works having used so little of it and especially with regards to foreign nationals. To be honest I dont think the NHS knows how it works either in this regard since there seem to be such loose checks on people.

As for her changing her contract so they don't offer insurance that may be possible since I would imagine thhey would be very sad to see her go. The other possiblity is that she quit and they have her back on a long term part time basis where insurance is not offered. This of course depends on how flexible her boss is. They are generally very cautious about these things though.

Sally

If her pregnancy is normal she won't need too much poking around. In the UK you don't even see a doctor for normal pregnancies.

Just get on and enjoy it, fretting too much is bad for the baby.