Health Insurance - Who Understands This $#!+?
I just did benefits renewal at my employer. It’s a glorious time of year. You get to see how much more you’ll be paying to get worse coverage. And boy am I paying more. And oh, how it is worse.
At the top of the list for this crapenfest is health insurance. Now I am an educated man, but how the hell am I supposed to understand all this crap? I mean seriously. PPO, HMO, EPN, catastrophic care, indemnity option, out-of-pocket maximums, blah, blah, blah.
News flash for company benefits people - I’m not a health insurance expert. That’s not what I do for a living. I don’t know the difference between a PPO and an EPN and I don’t want to know.
Here’s what I need: reasonable medical coverage for a reasonable price.
Is that so hard to deliver? Apparently it is.
And no wonder. Have you ever seen the little form your doctor uses to select what services he or she performed during your visit? It’s two pages of 8-point font. Then the office staff has to translate that into a code for each and every insurance they take. Is there any wonder billing screw-ups are routine? If you don’t have one of these stories, either you’ve never used health insurance or you’re not trying hard enough.
benefits
October 17th, 2007 at 9:44 pm
Sometimes I think this is how people get into bad mortgages, loans, etc. It’s all so confusing that normal people can’t figure out how it works.
October 18th, 2007 at 9:27 am
Yeah and to top it off, the doctors/nurses typically are not up to speed on the requirements of the different insurance programs that they accept….For example, my health plan requires that I get lab work done by certain area labs for it to be covered. Most doctors typically send their clients to the same lab for any required lab work. Every single time I go to the same doctor, I have to remind them of which lab to send me to. Without fail, if I forget to remind them, they will give me paperwork for the non-insured lab.
October 18th, 2007 at 2:23 pm
@ Mrs. Micah - I hadn’t thought of it that way, but you’re right. As confusing as this is to me, I’m sure closing a mortgage is to others.
@ JB - Even better - you don’t fail to remind them and they give you the paperwork for the other place anyway.
January 23rd, 2008 at 11:22 pm
Good Job. It amazes me how many people still don’t shop around for insurance. Even with all these sites out there that can search the insurance marketplace in minutes. Remember to shop around and get more than one quote. And don’t just accept your renewal from your current insurer.