The Information We Still Need to Manage Our Health Care

By Paul Downs, January 6, 2014

After writing eight posts on my search for health insurance, which generated more than 275 comment from readers, I was more than ready to move on. After all, I do have a day job — running my little factory — and I have other projects and problems to address. But my mind keeps returning to a scene I witnessed the week before Christmas.

I came into my office a little late one morning and found my bookkeeper sitting in front of her computer, tears streaming down her face. This stopped me cold — I had never, in 27 years as a boss, seen one of my employees weeping. Alarmed, I asked her what had happened, and she told me: “I need to make a decision about which insurance plan to choose, and I can’t figure out how much a doctor’s visit will cost — and that’s what I need to know. I’ve been on the phone all morning with Independence Blue Cross, trying to get an answer. I’ve been on hold, I’ve talked to people, I called my doctor, and I can’t get anyone to give me a number. I am so frustrated I just want to — I can’t say it.”

My bookkeeper, as I mentioned in my last post, elected to leave our company group and buy insurance through the individual exchange. She works two days a week, and so had missed my presentation on how Affordable Care Act-compliant policies work, and she hadn’t read my account of how I had failed in my own quest to find out what I could expect to pay out-of-pocket if I signed up for a silver or bronze policy. A numbers-oriented person, she had set up a spreadsheet to evaluate whether a silver or bronze policy was a better choice for her, and she had hit the same wall I had hit — not enough information to make a good decision.

And that brings me to the point of this post. I have taken a very long journey, starting with the first call from my agent and ending with my final decision as to what insurance to buy for 2014. Over those weeks, I spent a huge amount of time digging through the information given to me and trying to identify the best course of action for my company and my people.