Putting the middleman back in?

No kidding.
But this article focuses on an area that, until recently, hasn�t had a lot of media play: personal health care advocates. These folks will help you make sense of the bill you just got from the hospital, or help you determine whether you need a referral for that knee surgery. And the service costs just $400 a year for a family.
I looked through their website, and they seem to offer a great array of these types of benefits. Basically, they become your personal HR department.
I have mixed feeling about this. On the one hand, as a professional agent, I expect that my clients will call me when they have questions on their bills, or an issue about coverage. So on that level, I resent that they�re paying someone else to do my job.
On the other hand, clients who use this service cease being my service problem, and I can devote more time to sales (which is how I earn a living). It�s not that I mind doing the service work � I don�t � but hey, this takes some pressure off of me, and they�re not really my competition.
But there�s a part of me that is concerned that, if and/or when there comes a major claim dispute, or a substantial coverage issue, I�m going to have to become involved anyway, but I�ll have no knowledge or records of what has transpired thus far, thereby severely hampering my ability to help resolve the problem.
I�m going to noodle on this one a while�

Komentar

Posting Komentar

Postingan populer dari blog ini

Posting Comments -- Update

Okay, finally figured out how they work. You can post "anonymously" (i.e. without registering): Scroll down to a post's "comments" button, and click it. You'll see a screen with a large button that says "Sign In." BUT, just below that button is one that says: "Or Post Anonymously" Click on that, and you're good to go!
Baca selengkapnya

Promising New Legislation � Part II

In Part I, we discussed the first three major areas of HB and SB 5. In this post, we�ll explore the other two areas under consideration. To refresh your memory, these would be: - Health care providers would be required to provide consumers advanced notice of health care services costs - Proposes an analysis of a high-risk pool as a health insurance option for uninsured Ohioans, and further analysis of how to increase participation in small employer purchasing alliances. The first item is interesting. According to my friend Bob in Hotlanta, this is being proposed in Georgia, as well: SB83 would �require hospitals and medical facilities to provide estimates of charges to patients.� I�m kinda ambivalent about this. On the one hand, when I walk into McDonald�s, there�s a sign that tells me how much that Big Mac is going to cost. So how come I can�t walk into my doc�s office and get the same thing? Well, for one thing, everyone pays the same amount for a Big Mac; i.e. there�s no �Burger N
Baca selengkapnya

Throw Out the Highs and the Lows

Throw out the highs and the lows, then work with the ones in the middle. This was advice given to me a long time ago by a lady I admired. She was a consultant with one of the alphabet houses in Nashville and handled some big regional, and national accounts. One day I was calling on her as she was sorting through various bids for coverage on one of her accounts. Despite what most casual insurance buyers think, this is a tedious process. Most insured �shop� their coverage maybe every 2 � 3 years while a few will more often than that. To the untrained eye all plans with the same deductible and �roughly� the same coverage should offer the same coverage. They don�t. To the casual buyer, once policies with the same deductible and copay are grouped together, you look for the lowest price. This is a fatal flaw and one of the reasons I encounter so many people who are dissatisfied with their health insurance plan. In truth, there are often subtle differences from plan to plan. On the surface th
Baca selengkapnya