To be or not to be Insured

Let’s start off with saying that I am annoyed. Annoyed at the insurance company. To be honest, we have a lot of insurances. Insurances for the car, for the house, for what is in the house, for when we get old and even for when we will not be here anymore….

Thankfully, we have so far not had to use any of those insurances and certainly hope that we also will not have to for many years to come. So why am I annoyed? Let me tell you!

Because that I no longer live in a welfare state like I used to, things that I beforehand took for granted, like healthcare are no longer free. Many will probably not agree with me, but I claim that the basic (with a small upgrade) healthcare that we pay for through the HMO pretty much covers our needs in the health department. But still, when sitting with our insurance agent about a decade ago, we were easily persuaded that it is not enough and that we need another private health insurance to cover all the horrible things that might or might not happen to us.

So we did one of those and are still making the monthly payments until today. I am happy to say that I have never used it until now. But now I need to go through a small procedure and of course turned to the insurance company to cover the expenses for the surgery to take place in a private hospital. And what happens? Somewhere (written in small letters) it could be that this specific thing is not covered!

Let’s look at the numbers: we have been paying to this insurance for 10 years meaning that the total cost so far has been: 300 shekels x 12 months x 10 years = 36,000 shekels.

That is a lot of money and much much more than what I need to pay for the specific procedure I am having. I might or might not need something bigger and more expensive in the future but I think I would be better off simply putting the money into a savings account instead of paying them to the insurance company.

So in the end I am annoyed but most of all at myself!