Medical Schmedical.

What's the one thing you don't want to be living and working in the U.S. without? That's right. Medical cover. Guess what hasn't been sorted out properly for our relocation? Right again. I'm currently some kind of non-person, not having a Social Security Number (SSN). I can't apply for an SSN until my immigration information has filtered its way through the system to the Social Security department. The wisdom on this (from people who are paid to know these things) is that it takes up to 10 working days... so on Friday (10 working days since we arrived) I'm off to the Social Security office to apply for an SSN. Then it will take another couple of weeks before I get mailed my Social Security card, and consequently know my number. Until then, I'm in some kind of limbo. The SSN is key to taxation, so I knew I wouldn't be able to go onto the company payroll until I had one - I'd been warned of that. However, what everybody seems to have missed is that I'm also not on the system for Medical cover either. We only found out about this a few days ago, and the immediate advice from the medical system administrators was to pay for any medical treatment up front, and it would be reimbursed once I'm on the system. It's handy, then, that I brought a few hundred thousand dollars with me to cover medical care during this period in the event of something serious happening to one of us. Oh, that's right... I didn't. It's genuinely surprising to me that something as totally unacceptable as this could happen, especially when the company handles so many international transfers that there's a whole department dedicated to the logistics. However, after a lot of negotiation on my behalf by my direct boss and the local staffing representative, it has finally been sorted out. I'm still not actually covered by the US system - it is, apparently, too difficult to do that. I'm now covered by the 'international' version of the UK coverage that I was on before I left the UK. So now we're free to get sick.