I Have Insurance. My Pills Still Cost $1,000 a Week.

Photograph by David DeLossy/Getty Images.

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Sarah Wildman’s story about her awful experience with the individual health care market has hit a nerve. Wildman is testifying today before the Joint Economic Committee on Health Care Reform and she has inspired several of you to send similar tales of health insurance nightmares. Some of you couldn’t find any affordable insurance, others have been nearly bankrupted by mental-health care or medications you need to survive. Here is a sampling of your stories. Some have been slightly edited for readability. Please send more to doublex.slate@gmail.com.

Couldn’t Even Get Crappy Individual Care

During the 2001 economic downturn I was laid off from my job at a Fortune 100 company. As a healthy 30-year-old I could not get health insurance. I had no medical issues, was within the healthy weight range and yet I couldn't purchase individual health insurance. I could not get approved for insurance because five years earlier before I had a test that came back negative. That's correct: Because the doctor ordered a test to be sure she didn't see anything—and she didn't—I couldn't get insurance.

Continuing health insurance through COBRA was not an option because the cost was significantly greater than my total monthly unemployment compensation, and would have quickly depleted our savings. As a result, my husband and I eventually settled for catastrophic insurance. My husband continued working toward his graduate degree; I was out of work for six months and relied on Planned Parenthood for my annual gynecological exam and access to birth control. When I finally found a position at a much smaller firm, my health care premiums were three times what I had been paying at the larger company.

— Cecily Welch, via e-mail

Bills for Depression Cause Even Greater Stress

Despite being relatively young (mid-20s), I have never considered skimping on health insurance. The fact that I have had a well-paying professional job with full benefits since the moment I graduated from college meant that it never seemed like an issue. Four months after switching to a job with a smaller company, and just a couple months before my wedding, I was hospitalized for depression. I had never had any mental health issues previously, so it never occurred to me that coverage for that would be any different.

It was such a nightmare. ... The insurance company ended up covering 80 percent of my $7,200 hospital stay and $400 emergency room trip, but only 60 percent of the $300 ambulance trip (they wouldn't let my husband drive between the ER and the hospital for "insurance reasons") and the $250/week follow-up psychiatrist visits. Of course, I say "ended up" because I got a letter informing me that my hospital stay was not covered at all a few days after I returned from my honeymoon. It took about six months to resolve everything, and I'm sure some people in my position would not have been able to deal with the weekly phone calls I had to make to get any coverage.

What I have learned since is that most insurance policies have completely separate rules for mental health coverage. Higher co-pays, lower caps, and generally less coverage. Most people don't know this until they need it, because no one ever thinks they will need it. More frightening still, it is nearly impossible to get coverage on the open market if you have any history of mental health problems. I'm incredibly fortunate: I had coverage then and I have better coverage now. (I switched to my husband's insurance through his employer, which is much larger.) I could afford the $3,000 plus I paid after insurance that year, and I was able to keep my job through all of this. For so many others, this is not true, and these are people least able to handle the stress.

—via reader e-mail