Imagine you're a health insurance administrator

[dtm]

So imagine you administer a health insurance plan for a mid-sized company. Now imagine that, as with most things in the corporate world, you need to do some belt-tightening because the rise in health care costs has outstripped the (possibly nonexistent) rise in the amount of money going into the insurance plan. After some consultant time, you decide that the appropriate step is to raise the copays on office visits and prescription drugs.

Now, as these copay rates are printed on the health insurance cards every participant carries, do you:

1. Announce the new rates, but say that they will be effective at some future date so as to give time to print and distribute new cards
2. Announce the new rates, effective immediately, and send sheets of sticky labels to each office which participants would use to amend their cards
3. Same as above, but without the labels; state in the announcement that the new cards and benefit documents will arrive "within a few weeks"
4. Same as above, except that the rates are effective as of March 1st, and the announcement is sent out at 5pm March 6th.

Which one of these options was chosen by the administrator of my company's health plan is left as an exercise for the reader.

Comments

[tayefeth.livejournal.com]

Wow, that sucks. That's whole new levels of suckitude. Is that even legal, changing the benefits after the fact?

Ok, it's not that bad

[dtm]

I've been informed that I will be "automatically credited" the $5 difference for any services paid for before the new rates hit the health insurance administrators' systems, which was sometime today.

So they are changing the rates backwards, but giving me this "gift" of the old rates for earlier this week.