Month: May 2007

Health Insurance and Living in a Small Town

A good friend of mine is fighting a battle with throat cancer. HD (I’m used to calling him Dieter) and his wife Una moved to a small Oregon town in 2002 after they retired. The other day Dieter sent me an email telling me the bad news about his health. He also gave me some really useful information about their experiences with medical insurance. HD and Una have been roll models for what I want to do in retirement. I regularly follow their web site.  I really value and appreciate their advice. I asked and he said I could include a portion of his email here.

"Hello Marion,

I just read you latest blog, and I had to write to you with, what I
think is, a very important issue in your retirement.  And that is
health care.

Unfortunately right now I am battling throat cancer,  am in chemo and
radiation treatment. It was diagnosed early February, had surgery in
Portland at OHSU (the university hospital there) and now they are
mopping up after it with the other stuff.  Something I have to go
through. Wish me luck!

But the reason I write to you is the fact that health care in a small
town is a *BIG* issue (at least for us it is).  Depending on your
insurance type and willingness to pay a lot, it may be very difficult
to find doctors and facilities that work with your insurance company.
Una is fighting a brave and big battle with our insurance (their name
is xxxxx and they work through a Dr. network called xxxxxx).
They have strange ideas as to what is reasonable for a patient (i.e.,
going almost 2 hours one way to receive daily radiation, luckily we
talked them out of that nonsense and are having it in town).  Also
finding doctors in a small town may a problem, i.e., there is no ENT
doctor taking our insurance list. – Also, when we moved from California
to Oregon, we learned that the company we had then, did NOT operate in
Oregon, so insurance is not necessarily transferable to another state.
Just a few things to let you know. 

Best Wishes to your upcoming move and the prep work for it.
Take care,

HD (aka Dieter) and Una"

HD asked me to xxx out the insurance company name since they have to keep working with them. His email really struck a chord with me. I have read advice like this before but I usually skip right over it because I figure we are too young to have to worry about this kind of thing. But of course that is ridiculous. Anyone can need medical care at any age and when you need it it is too late to move somewhere else.

Duke and I currently have Kaiser HMO  for our insurance. We buy it through Intuit Cobra.We have been happy with Kaiser but It looks like it is not available available in Nevada. Since we will be right over the border form California we were thinking we would keep it at least until the Cobra runs out. But given Dieter’s email I am going to do some more research. When the Cobra runs out we will probably get a high deductible insurance with a Health Savings Account.  I’ll keep you posted.

Travels and Getting the House Ready to Sell

On April 17 Duke finished his first tax season working for H&R Block. Since then we shifted into high gear in our drive to get our house ready to sell so that we can move. We have lots of other stuff going on too.

One of my daughters was moving so last Saturday morning we helped her transfer a load of furniture to her new place and then we headed towards LA. Duke’s girls’ choir had a recital and one of the girls had a solo. The recital was great and the solo (her first time singing in public) was very impressive.

After the recital on Sunday night we drove to Escondido to my parent’s house. Monday morning we took Mom to have an MRI and an EEG. Mom goes back to her doctor this coming Friday. My sister Barbara and her husband will be with her for that. We are hoping to get a better diagnosis for the cause of her Parkinsonsisms.

On Wednesday we drove from Escondido to Reno. It always seems odd to me that Reno is essentially due north of San Diego. The road goes east of LA and then straight for many mile right past Edward’s Air Force base and up the East side of the Sierras. The mountains are beautiful. I climbed Mt Whitney 9 years ago so It was fun to go through Whitney Portal again.

On Thursday in Reno we had lunch with my Mom’s brother and his wife. Then we looked at a few apartments. Our plan is to get our house up for sale and then rent a place in Reno to use as a home base while we decide where we want to move for the next stage of our lives.

We looked at several places and think we will rent a house in a Del Webb Active Adult community, for people 55 or better. (Duke just turned 55 and I will turn 55 this summer). For less rent than they were asking for the apartments that we liked we can have a new house with a two car garage and use of the club house with indoor pool and walking track. I don’t think it is the kind of place we want to live in eventually but it should be perfect for the next year. It will be right around 240 miles from the old house to the new house.

The list of things we want to do before we sell the house is long. Before we left last week we painted our bonus room and now we are laying solid oak hardwood on th floor. Next we will lay porcelain tile in our laundry room and in the one bathroom that still doesn’t have it. Next we will get scaffolding and paint the walls and ceiling of the living room with the 24 foot ceiling. Those are just the first 3 big items on the list. In the next month we will also be helping Duke’s girls move and helping my parents move from the assisted living place back to their house.

June 10 is our target to have the house on the market so May is going to be a very busy month!