In October, I canceled my COBRA health insurance and switched to a different insurance at about half the monthly rate of my COBRA. When I called my old employer to cancel the COBRA, I asked when I could expect a refund check, since I’d pre-paid a portion of the funds. “We don’t do refunds,” said the lady. I was like “Are you fucking kidding me?” It seemed ridiculous, but she assured me they had a no-refund policy. “You can call your new insurer and ask them to start their coverage a month from now,” she said. But the last thing I wanted to do was talk to another insurance company, and I was already really happy that such a good plan had accepted me, in light of my medical past, and I didn’t want to rock the boat. I decided to just suck up the loss, and I thought the money was gone forever.
At the beginning of this month, I decided it would be fun to participate in the Salvation Army’s Adopt a Family program for Christmas. We’d done it every year at my previous employer and it was always a lot of fun. Since finances are tight for everyone, I assumed people at work wouldn’t chip in much, but I wanted to move forward with it anyway. As I expected, not a lot of people donated — but the people who did gave very generously, and I was so impressed with them. It still wasn’t enough to cover all the costs, so when I finally went shopping for all the stuff for the family, it ended up costing me a lot. I was fine with that, though, because I knew it was going to help an underprivileged family have a slightly better year. My grandfather — who was committed to doing charity work despite being very poor himself — used to say that everything he’d given away he’d gotten back ten-fold. I try to live by those words.
Two days ago, I got an unexpected check in the mail. It was from my old health insurance company. It was a refund check. Apparently the lady I’d spoken to was confused, because here was a refund check for the portion of the pre-paid insurance I hadn’t used. And, oddly enough, it was almost exactly the amount I’d spent shopping for my Salvation Army family — about $20 more, in fact.
So, ya know, I haven’t quite refined my humanitarian skills to the point where I’m seeing a ten-fold return on investment, like my grandfather, but I’m certainly on the right track.
