It is impossible to get a human being on the phone with my insurance company outside of regular business hours, Monday through Friday, 8:30AM to 5PM.
Given the complex nature of our health care and health insurance system, this seems downright criminal.
People do not get sick or injured on any set timetable. They really should have representatives available 24/7 so that folks can make informed and responsible decisions about the care that they seek.
Kazzy
One man. Two boys. Twelve kids.
We have been experiencing some system resource issues. We believe the problem may be resolved, but if it is not please bear with us.
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Oh. And apparently their website is now down for scheduled maintenance so that they can “better serve” me. Grand.Report
Medical insurance companies make money by being inconvenient to their customers. Its so they could avoid or at least delay payment. Thats why medical insurance should either be heavily regulated by the state or operated by the state. Healthcare is an area where socialist theory works.Report
One reason why this is so, is that health care is not a consumer item.
No one really wants it, people do their best to avoid needing it, and even if offered it for free, would decline it unless they were in pain.Report
The other reason is that it’s hard for an individual to approach healthcare with the same patience and research as buying furniture or other consumer goods.Report
Some of that is inherent to the product and some of that is not but is deliberately introduced by the companies to obfuscate the process.
When buying a couch, there are usually only a few different criteria people are considering. Comfort, appearance, cost… maybe one or two others. Now, we might have different taste in what makes a couch nice to lay on or what looks good and we’ll surely all have different price points but… the range of expectations is small enough that enough people can provide a system of reasonable feedback.
Health insurance is much difference. Cost is an issue, but health insurance/care is not a one time cost. This one might have lower premiums but higher co-pays. This one might offer better coverage for these sorts of treatments but less for those kinds. This one might cover everything really well but with only a small handful of providers thus necessitating out-of-network services at much higher costs. Etc.
So, you can go to a store and sit on a couch and ask a couple of people how they like it and make a reasonable determination if it is the right couch for you, even if those people have different tastes and needs.
Not so much with health insurance.
Of course, this issue would be mitigated if you could do side-by-side, apples-to-apples comparisons of the different coverages and different costs and all that. But that would empower the customer too much. So every plan is outlined in a 50 page booklet in which there are a zillion rules each of which has 1000 exceptions. Hell, I’ve looked at two plans offered by the same company via the same employer in a side-by-side comparison sheet prepared by the company and *STILL* couldn’t figure out which one I wanted. And not in a, “Do I prioritize cost over convenience or vise-versa?” way… in a, “I’m still not sure which one costs more per year based on how I typically visit doctors!” way.Report
Kazzy, I meant that purchasing healthcare isn’t like buying a furniture in the sense that when people need healthcare, its often an emergency and not something they could take their time with because they want to start cancer treatment ASAP or the bone needs to be fixed right now, that most people lack the knowledge to know what the best treatment for their illness is or the resources to research this in the same way you research computers, and that very few people are in a place to enter into any sort of negotiation with their providers on price.Report
On top of that, most people get their health insurance through an employer. The insurance company offers a network of preferred providers. The insurance company pays the bills. The normal ability and incentives people have to shop for price, value, and convenience are not there.Report
Insert obligatory comment how it is unpossible for wonderful private businesses not to have found the best way to serve you, their treasured customer.
Just because it feels like dealing with health insurance companies is harder then getting decent service from a forkin cable company is purely our own inability to clearly see. You are getting the best service possible, now shut up and bask in the glow of best HC system in the world.Report
My cable company offers 24/7 internet chat support service, during which they can directly contact your equipment and diagnose and fix a number of issues.
My health insurer sometimes spells my name right.Report
Always remember- you are not the health insurance companies’ customer. Your employer is.Report
Yeah but I’m sure emitters would like their emotes to be able to contact their health insurance companies on weekends so they don’t do it during office hours or have to take time off from work.Report
So they have special, 24/7 access for people with individually purchased policies?Report
You know, when the government takes over healthcare, it’ll be just as bad as the DMV.Report
My local DMV has late night hours at least once a week.Report
I’ve never had a problem at the DMV.Report
Neither have I, but I keep getting told how awful it is.Report
depends on the state and the dmv office. ny is real hit or miss in terms of both service and general decrepitude.Report
ny is real hit or miss in terms of both service and general decrepitude.
I hear that a lot, but what about the DMV?Report
Most criticism of the DMV seems ignorant to the actual complexity of how those offices function.Report
“I hear that a lot, but what about the DMV?”
[rimshot]
seriously though, for example: the midtown manhattan dmv is a smoking crater of terrible. the one down in the financial district isn’t terrible at all. coney island is pretty good, flushing is medium bad and jamaica is pointlessly lousy.Report
Same. I always hear friends complain about how their registration stickers or license got lost in the mail and they can’t drive or what not. Yet mine always seems to come very quickly.Report
My DMV has furlough days. Try getting anything done on that day, and has fewer “full service” centers vs “license renewal” locations-and you can’t get your renewal by mail except once a decade.
Try explaining to the “emission testing guy” that YOU HAVE TO PUT THE GAS CAP BACK ON SECURELY before you check the emissions computer or you get a failure.
Try explaining to the “emission testing guy” how to drive a stick shift.Report
What we need to do is pass a law making it so that people only get sick on a proper timetable.Report
Which, once they offshore their call centers, will be 8:30PM to 5AM. Or possibly September through March.Report
Oh Kazzy. Think you’ve got it bad as a patient? You don’t have a clue how bad the health insurance firms treat the physicians and hospitals. It’s far worse.Report
Oh man could I (via my wife!) tell you stories about trying to contact insurance companies, trying to get them to OK a procedure, trying to get them determine if the procedure is covered or if it’s necessary, trying to get them to pay…Report
Well, Kazzy, that’s just your fault for not having a stay-at-home wife and a first-shift union job, the way all Americans did back when the concept of “business hours” was invented.Report