HEALTH INSURANCE -This is a ‘must have’ item if you want to stay out of debt.
Health care and education are the top most expensive services in the United States, and of course they are major contributors to debt acquisition for most people. If you are planning to get you out of debt, having health and auto insurance coverage is a prerequisite.
I learned this the hard way in the summer of 2004 when I canceled my individual health coverage that i was paying out of pocket. I did not continue the plan because i decided i had other pressing issues to channel my dollars. Close to the end of summer, I started having some – on and off severe headaches. One day it would last thirty minutes another day it would be 25 minutes. I just ignored it and argued with myself that i was working a lot and if i just relax and take some pills, the pain would eventually go away.
The pills relieved the pain but only temporarily since it was getting worse each day. About three weeks into the pain on a Tuesday morning, I had this terrible pain that I had not experienced before to the extent that I lost consciousness for a couple of minutes.
I went to an emergency room, and had some CT scan done on my head “just to be safe”. It turned clear! No strange things in my head, and so I was treated for migraine headache and sent home. Two weeks later and still treating the migraine headache, I was brushing my teeth and a piece of my tooth fell from my mouth, but i could not identify the source of the broken tooth.
I went to the dentist and was told my wisdom tooth was decayed and had crashed on the inside which could sever the nerves. Needless to say, they extracted the wisdom tooth, and that was the end of my horrible ‘migraine headaches’.
However since I had no insurance, the total bill for my “migraine headache” and tooth removal amounted to $4,500. It took me three years to pay it off and i learnt my lesson the hard way.
Do you have health insurance?