And Like a Good Neighbor...

No doubt I’m violating some HIPAA regulation when I tell you that our daughter, Madi, has a herniated disc, but I`ve been dealing with insurance companies and am about to lose my mind. After several visits and an MRI, we found out the doctor, contrary to what he told us, is out-of-network.

We also found out that we don’t have good insurance. Since we are self-employed, we knew we didn’t have great insurance, but through this experience we have discovered that should any of our family need a procedure, Blue Cross Blue Shield will pay for the hack saw to perform the surgery and the stick for said patient to bite down on. That’s about it!

Needless to say, insurance has been on my mind a lot lately. As Americans, we have health, life, and dental insurance; we have flood, earthquake, fire, homeowner’s, or renter’s, insurance, car and travel insurance. There is even Aflac, a supplemental policy in case you don’t have enough regular insurance.

Lloyds of London will insure individual body parts. For example, David Beckham took out a policy for $140 million to protect his limbs for soccer. Mariah Carey has her voice insured for $35 million and another policy on her legs for an additional $35 million. Many other celebrities do it too.

I saw a cartoon once that said selling insurance sounds like the mafia. “You’ve got a real nice family. Be a shame if something happened to them.”

Is this a symptom or a sign of a greater problem? Do we live in fear, yearn for security, or do we just need to feel prepared for any eventuality or crisis?

Does insurance actually make things better or does it perpetuate our feelings of control? Have we fooled ourselves into believing that we can have actual guarantees? That everything will be ok? Does the need for assurances shut us off from the possibilities that surround us? Are we more focused on what catastrophes might befall us than on what possibilities might be available to us?

It is absolutely true that it’s a great big, scary world out there, and we don’t know what’s going to happen or what could go wrong.

As speaker and researcher Shawn Achor noticed at a global accounting firm, tax auditors and managers who spent 8 to 14 hours a day looking for errors on tax forms were in fact, training their brains to look for mistakes and pitfalls, and it was spilling over into their everyday lives. They tended only to see the worst in everything.

While I certainly don’t recommend sticking your head in the sand and pretending bad things don’t happen, we can’t allow the possibilities of adversity to become our focal point.

Maybe the best we can do is to look for possibilities instead of catastrophes, focus on the good; be prepared, and then rely on our faith when bad things do happen - and oh yeah, make sure your insurance policy is paid up too!!