I learned a really important financial lesson this weekend that might save me a lot of money in the future: ALWAYS call your insurance company to verify what you owe before you pay a medical bill.

A few months ago I had to go to the hospital, and not long after that, I got a bill for $500.66. I usually pay bills right on time but honestly I forgot about this one. Of course, the threatening notes start coming: pay us or else. So I called to see if I could pay by phone rather than writing a check, and the woman in billing tells me that I don’t owe anything because my insurer finally sent them in a payment!

Incredible. If I wait months to send in a payment, I get threatening letters. My insurance company can wait months and nobody says anything. On top of that, If I’d just written a check, would they have sent me my $500 back? I doubt it.

I was going to post a follow-up on athletes wasting money today, but that was until I had my first experience with unaffordable prescription drugs. Last week my doctor prescribed allergy meds for me and I went to pick them up last night. The cost: $69.99 for one bottle that’d have lasted me a month!!!! I told the pharmacist check again, my insurance information is on file there. He pointed to a sticker that said “NOT COVERED”. Wow.

So, I’m paying $120 a month for health insurance that won’t even cover something as basic as allergy medicine? I did what any bewildered person would do: called my mother, who takes high blood pressure medicine. She laughed. “You’re only responding like that because you’ve never been sick and you don’t have to take medicine. People go through worse than that every day.”

I can’t imagine. I can actually afford the $70 allergy pills, but I’d rather sneeze all day than pay that much for medicine when I already pay for insurance. But what if you were like my moms, who absolutely needs what she’s prescribed and is far more expensive.

Presidential candidates, are you listening?

Gas prices are up, interest rates might climb, inflation’s a near certainty and people are out of a job all over the place. And this is an election year, which means three things: promises, promises, promises from both candidates about what they’ll do to turn things around and make sure your bank account is healthier in the next year.

So Fortune magazine this week has two covers: one with Republican nominee John McCain and one with Democrat Barack Obama. Both covers say the same thing: “How I’ll Fix the Economy.” There’s a great chart in there that I’m going to liberally quote from that shows where they stand on:

• Taxes: McCain wants to cut the corporate tax rate by 10 percentage points and keep the long term capital gains tax at 15 percent, while Obama would keep corporate taxes where they are and raise the capital gains tax by 10 points, to 25 percent. Obama also favors repealing the Bush tax cuts for wealthy individuals and using the money to pay for things he said would help the middle class.
• Housing: Obama wants a $20 billion package to help families facing foreclosure; McCain wants $10 billion.
• Health care: McCain wants “tort reform” — in other words limits on lawsuits against doctors and insurers, which he thinks will bring the cost of health care down. He also “would shift the burden from employers to individuals to shop and pay for plans”, according to Fortune. Obama wants to spend billions to expand public health care programs but wouldn’t  require you to buy health care coverage.

So which plan works better for you?

Having bills that you can’t pay can put you in the poor house? But can it also put you in the crazy house or the hospital? Maybe so, according to a few stories I’ve seen recently. This USA Today article says that mental health workers are seeing a ton of people coming in for depression and stress related to being in or near foreclosure on their homes. And this story from the Associated Press says that the stress of debt is also causing physical health problems, from headaches to sore backs and worse.

None of this should surprise anybody: any level of stress can affect a person’s physical and mental health, so financial pressure will certainly be no different. The ironic thing is that if you’re already under the strain of poor finances, having worsening health could make things worse, creating medical bills that add to the pile, which adds to the stress and perpetuates a vicious circle.

Yet another reason to be disciplined with your cash and your health. I think I’ll go for a walk now, and have a salad. A cheap one.

So the Fed lowered rates again today, but what else is new? The government is scrambling to try to keep the economy from going further into the tank, but over the last week all the election coverage has been about what Barack Obama’s former pastor said. After opening my mailbox yesterday, I want to see more discussion of Obama and Clinton’s healthcare plans — since I got a taste of what it’s like to be uninsured in the mail.

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