It's that dreaded time of year again.
The time when I, a California small business employer group, get the fat envelope from my health insurance company. The envelope full of cheerful reminders that it's time to review my health coverage, and oh, by the way, here are your new rates for next year. Happy, happy, joy, joy! Check out the joy! It's glossy paper, the stock photos are smiling!
I've come to expect 10%. This year I sucked in my breath to see 15.4%. I also note that I have people who are about to run over into the dreaded fortysomething age bracket... that will be a 31% increase ON TOP of the annual change when that happens.
Holy freaking cow.
The good news is that I don't happen to have any workers in the 60-64 age bracket. They cost 3.5x as much as a twentysomething worker on our high-deductible low cost plan, which makes them a bargain at $650 a month, or $7800 a year, for a single older worker. (The most expensive plan is $1500 a month for the 60something worker, or more than my first mortgage including insurance and property taxes.) No wonder employers don't want to take a chance on them.
Did I mention the joy?
The joy is sprinkled liberally throughout a 1/2" stack of glossy brochures printed on classy stock, full of incomprehensible verbiage and charts that are allegedly to inform me of my renewal options on alternate plans, and allow me to compare them. All the plans have glorious and easily distinguishable names, like Signature Freedom and Signature Choice and Signature Options and Signature Independence... you know, to make it easy to remember which plans are which. Hmm, which are the ones that come with free hypoallergenic puppies?
I have a technical degree from an elite university and this is all just gibberish.
There's plenty of choices, though. I didn't have the heart to count them, but there are at least 50 options, incomprehensible in their differences.
There's a plan similar to mine that would allow me to have an HSA but otherwise has inferior benefits on a couple of key points. The deductibles and percentages paid are the same. But the HSA account costs slightly more, and then you still have to fund it. Why isn't it less?
At the bottom of the renewal form is this gem (caps from original):
CALIFORNIA LAW PROHIBITS AN HIV TEST FROM BEING REQUIRED OR USED BY HEALTH CARE SERVICE PLANS AND INSURANCE COMPANIES AS A CONDITION OF OBTAINING COVERAGE.
thus showing us the pathetic nature of our patchwork approach to legislation. It's OK for an insurance company to reject you for croup, or pretty much any ailment real or imagined EXCEPT a positive HIV test. Way to go, legislature.
...
Finally, I gave up. The deadline to do something came and I couldn't figure out anything more clever than to just renew the existing plan. Besides, I had billable work to do. I signed the form, faxed it, wrote my check. And maybe next year I'll have time to do it right. You know, in that quiet time between Thanksgiving and Christmas when there's not much else to do.
My chimney sweep and I did have a rollicking good vent about the whole health insurance debacle. I love that he is going from house to house, visiting the fine people all over my county, cleaning chimneys and evangelizing for Universal Health Care. It seems rather appropriately Santa-Clausian. Unfortunately, though, I don't think Santa will be bringing me a better plan next year, either.