A Lesson in Bureaucrazy

Yes, I mis-spelled "bureaucracy" on purpose because it is enough to drive normal, sane human beings to the brink of insanity.  If the government is involved, then it doesn't just take a person to the precarious edge of mental stability, but dropkicks the mind far out into the vast eternal chasm of confusion, leaving an eye-stabbing headache in its wake.  I have plumbed such depths this week in trying to sign up for health insurance for my family.

Due to ongoing chronic health issues of many stripes, my husband is on long-term disability now.  There has been improvement in some areas, but others remain as they have for the last several years.  With this change to long-term disability comes the loss of employer-provided health insurance.  My first and most immediate response was to decide to return to full-time employment outside the home. I thought that would be the simplest route to finding health insurance for the family.  Besides shocking my children, I found it was not nearly as simple to rejoin the workforce in the Outside World.  Without going into a lengthy diatribe about that experience, I will just say that after counseling together my husband and I decided to pursue seeking health insurance through an insurance marketplace that offered subsidies to qualified families for now rather than change my status to Workforce Mom.

The headaches began.

I spent several days reviewing the multitude of health plans available to us, trying to decipher what the differences were and just what we could afford.  Do we go for higher Out of Pocket expenses in favor of lower deductibles or higher deductibles and lower OOPs? (I know how that last word looks in that sentence.  I think it fits.)

We made our decisions, but the actual form-filling-out proved to be the most torturous by far.  With computer pages reloading in the middle of filling out a form or taking me back to the beginning of the process all over again once I thought I was to the commitment stage, and random but detailed questions about family income, assets, and expenses, I waded through the processes.  I made multiple phone calls to people with varying degrees of empathy, helpfulness, and communication skills.  At the end of the week I think we have now made our applications for two health plans that will hopefully, maybe, cross-my-fingers be what will work for our family for the foreseeable future.

Here is what I learned:

-- When in doubt, call Select Health for answers to questions.  Their service representatives were the easiest, kindest, and most helpful to talk to.  Particular kudos go to Kim, McKenzie, and Alice for patiently and thoroughly answering all of my questions, even though I didn't end up going directly through Select Health to get the Select Health plan I signed up for on an exchange site.

-- Dental insurance is crazy expensive! We're still trying to decide what to do with that.  I think we will likely go with some kind of a discount card program that will defray some of the cost.

-- If you want to start your insurance on the first of the month you have to have applied for it by the 15th of the previous month.  This was the most painful piece of information to find out.  It is not explicitly noted anywhere either.  It is also the most expensive piece of information to find out because we will not have insurance now until November 1st.  If I had been aware of that kind of deadline I would have been working on this at the beginning of September instead of the end so our insurance could have started on October 1.  With chronic conditions for two members of my family, this will make October an expensive month for us.

-- Transitional insurance will get you through the month, but will only cover catastrophic kinds of events.  It does not cover prescriptions, preventative care, or regular office visits.  So it doesn't help us at all.

-- The federal government should hire call center representatives with good grammar and a Midwestern accent.

-- And the sign-up process is really an application process.  There is still "processing" that happens once you've submitted all of your information, your blood type, and a list of the contents of your linen closet (kidding about the last two items, but just barely).  You get to wait to find out what the final subsidy is you qualify for and what the final premium will be for your chosen plan at some later date.  Apparently on Monday someone will be calling me from the marketplace I worked through to verify my application with some security questions.

-- And finally, doing things SOONER is always better than LATER. This took many more hours to research, choose, and sign up than I dreamed it possibly could.

While the ACA/Obamacare guarantees the ability to sign up for health insurance (a good thing), it is hardly a simple process.  A gentleman I spoke with at the exchange I ended up using (not the government one) told me I should have tried signing up for health insurance before the ACA.  Somehow that did not make me feel any better.

"I'm from the government. I'm here to help you."

Right.