And the verdict is....

Denied.

Again.

Schmucks.

Apparently they should never have approved the prescription for The Kid in the first place. That was a mistake on their part. Oh and I was wrong about the cost. It's $535/person. The deal is that UVA doesn't cover it preventatively. Now if we actually had Malaria, then it would only be a 30 day approval process from the time the first two claims were denied. Nice.

Ricardo was so pissed, he emailed John Casteen (president of UVA for those not in the know). As luck would have it, Casteen has an addiction to his Blackberry and is looking into it (in other words, issuing commands) with benefits. The thing is that the cost of this stuff is so high that it is literally almost 10% of Ricardo's summer pay and that's before taxes. So imagine what goes on with the poor grad students!!

What we figured out though is that we don't need it the whole time. And that The Kid gets the same dosage we do. So since his was covered, and he got 90 pills, and ours is not covered but total all we need is 111 pills, we only actually have to pay for 21 pills. This should be within our budget.

But it really begs the question about health plans and insurance. Isn't the freaking point to avoid illness for pete's sake?! So with something like Malaria, wouldn't it be better for them to allow the meds so that we don't actually get the disease? Because it seems to me that treating it will be a whole lot more expensive than preventing it.

And who is the sick schmuck who sits around and devises these freaking rules anyway? What must that be like. I don't think I could live with myself. But then I also couldn't be someone who designs strip malls, so maybe that says a lot more about me than it does about them.

Oh and in the meantime, I'm freaking out over trying to get my head around what needs to be done. And I am completely convinced that I keep forgetting something huge, like a power of attorney (got it, btw). It's gotten so bad that really all of us are freaking out. The Kid is watching some movie to prevent him from having a grand mall melt down about how many stuffed animals he can take.

And Julia came so we could go over everything for the summer. So in some ways she's "going away" for 11 weeks too. And she's not stressed at all. Except by the remote control that no one can work anyway.

So it's really fun in our house!