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A study released this week showed that 67% of Americans were “confused about health care reform”.  I must admit that I am one of the ignorant masses on this topic and I have tried to keep up. At some point in the last few weeks, I have found myself agreeing with both sides of this discussion and feeling misled by politicians of all stripes.  The insurance companies have to be loving life.  Confusion reigns supreme.

One the one hand, I can easily see how the government could make things worse.  On the other, I don’t see how it could get worse after listening to my dear wife talk to our health insurance provider for about an hour and a half today.  This is a very regular task on her to-do list.  She was subjected to what I call the “run around subroutine” today.  If they can stretch this out, maybe you will just give up or die.  In either case, no claim processed today!

Today, our autism super mom called to check on the status of the same claims that she has been checking on every month for the last few months.  These were claims on things that had been getting processed and to which she had the all important “reference number” and a few inches of paper work with notes showing when she sent X claim to Y location and spoke to Z moron last month.  Claims that were in the system were now gone and after an hour of talking to one person, she was given the brush off to the “international claims” department which promptly sent her back to where she started in the first place.  Luckily, this time, she got a different cube dweller, who could see the mystery claims with no problem.  This just shows how much of a crap-shoot this whole endeavor was from the start.  Even though claims before and after these, sent to the same address and were processed, these weren’t and we were instructed to mail future claims to a totally NEW address in a different state.  The next time we check on these claims, they are likely to have no record of this conversation and tell us something completely different.  Incidentally, getting a service in a state other than the state where your insurance company resides, increases the confusion factor exponentially.

The next time that you run into the “run-around subroutine” try this …

• Hang Up
• Go have a cup of coffee
• Call the exact same number back and try your luck again with a new moron

At times, it seems like they must have a different moron security level on their computer system, since what Moron A can’t find in an hour, Moron B can find in a few seconds.  Sometimes, the person on the other end of the phone seems to be intentionally playing on the confusion.  These folks are probably trained in confusion tactics.  At other times, they seem to be as confused as the caller.  These folks are probably just naturally confused.  In either case, confusion is the end result.

In our specific case, as is the case with a lot of families impacted by an autism spectrum disorder, we generate a lot of confusion, red tape, and kill a lot of trees thanks to massive amounts of paperwork generated by this whole process.  Multiply this confusion by every insured sick person in the country and all of the doctors offices consumed with wading through this mess daily; and you quickly have MASS CONFUSION.  There is also the opportunity cost of the time lost talking to these morons.  This is time that could have been better spent with your child.

The end results is that the more confused we all are, the longer the insurance company gets to hold on to the cash that they should be paying on claims.  They would seem to have very little incentive to make this process any easier or more efficient.

A lot of healthy people walking around today THINK that they have health insurance.  I guess ignorance is bliss.  If they get sick, they will often learn that the insurance companies that are very proficient in collecting their premiums on time, seem very bureaucratic and inefficient when it comes time to even processing their claims, much less paying them.  While this is no shock, you have to wonder if the insurance companies design their back-end systems to maximize confusion or they just hire clueless morons to man the phones and let the confusion occur naturally.  In either case, I would classify the current system as a bona fide Cluster F%*#.  The fact that many of the people getting to enjoy this run around are sick or dying just adds to the evidence that the insurance companies do not have our health on their radar screen of things they care one iota about in today’s system.

I suspect the insurance companies are winning the health reform debate as long as most of us remain dazed and confused.

Filed under: Finances, Health Care Reform, Insurance