health insurance headache

ok so i have to vent. i have been super annoyed with trying to get health insurance in washington state. they have 2 open enrollment periods during the year, in which you don't have to do the standard health questionnaire. otherwise, you have to qualify under an exception (but that only applies for children under the age of 19). and of course that's who we care about the most for getting our health insurance. i'm not sure if it was just assurant, or if any insurance provider would have been this much work. i started the application in mid july and have just recently finished the process and have my family covered. after requesting documents from my previous insurance to show that, we are still covered and they wouldn't provide coverage if we moved to washington (meanwhile, hoping they wouldn't ask me if i had moved to washington already, and terminate me), it took 2 weeks to finally get them and i immediately forwarded them to assurant. at the end of the week, i saw that my application had expired. this was confusing, because i had been in contact with them and had just turned in all the documents they needed. i got them to resubmit my app to the underwriter. they realized they were looking at the wrong exception, and i should qualify and be covered. but then they wanted me to keep my effective date because they had to follow "state regulations" (which had already passed, it was less than a week away from the new month, and no, i didn't want to pay for 2 different health insurances for that month). i asked if they could look into it and i was told that i could either take the 8/1/12 effective date, or i could re-apply for coverage. are you kidding? all that work and effort just to re-apply? heck, if i'm going to start from scratch, maybe i should go with a different company. or just shoot for open enrollment. so why did i bother to get all the right documents in the first place? luckily, i have a dad that knows all the tricks from all his years of selling health insurance. he told me to call the washington office of insurance commissioner. i did. the lady i spoke with said that if they re-opened my app because of their error, they technically could change the effective date as well. ok, so it's not "state regulation" that i have to keep my original effective date? hmmm... she told me i should file a complaint. she also said i could ask them to review the decision. so i emailed the lady i had been corresponding with at assurant. i told her i just got off the phone with the commissioner's office and that i was told that change could be made. i said, i was encouraged to file a complaint but thought i would ask for a review of the decision first. the response i got was that my effective date had been changed to 9/1/12. wow. well, problem solved. not sure if i'll stay with assurant very long, but that's the coverage we have for now. can't beat paying $230/mo for a family policy that let's us do a copay for office visits. i really miss having benefits through the hospital or school and not have to worry about all this hassle. i guess we can only be disappointed in government regulation and the way healthcare is headed in our country. i kind of wish medical care was more like dental care, or anything that is do-able by being self-pay. i think someday i want to become a nurse practitioner and have my own clinic that just sees self-pay patients, with affordable prices.