With my last employer, I enjoyed 8 years of comprehensive health insurance. In that province, that said employer’s HMO coverage is one of the best, if not the best!

However, I am really not a sickly person. To tell you honestly, if I didn’t get pregnant, I only benefited from that health insurance during the APEs. On the one occasion I really needed it (child birth), I couldn’t be covered because of a legal technicality — I am not married.

I did not really mind then, even though that widened the hole in my pocket. I was just furious that the coverage couldn’t be extended to my child afterwards, because of the fact that he was born out of wedlock.

The HMO coverage would have been a family insurance — and since the family I have is not the one normally defined in such a society, I either had to accept that sitting down…or I could do something about it.

I decided not to accept such shit a situation and when I got back from my maternity leave, I worked to make an appeal.

[Actually, I wasn’t the first to make such an appeal. She just wasn’t heard because she was alone. See? There really is power in numbers!]

Our plea - supported by other single moms and a pre-existing single parent law - was to extend HMO coverage to kids of unmarried employees in the same way that it is given to the kids of married employees. A few months after my son turned one, we won the battle.

Something like that,  is one thing I will not just do because I felt that the existing rule is “discriminating” me but because I am not alone with such a need. I am not the only single mom in that company. They came out during and some after that. I bet others (even new employees) after I left are still benefiting from it.

Young kids are more in need of a health insurance coverage, especially before the age of seven. Besides, I do not want to be in a position that my son (or mother!) is sick and no hospital will accept us because I have no cash.

Which reminds me, I have to go back to where I inquired for an affordable family health insurance here in my new area. Oh no! How can I forget?!