Hands to Hold When Health Care Becomes a Maze

Chances are we have had some exposure here to the frustrations of trying to reach a human when our needs go beyond the automated functions available...every insurance plan is different as is every insurance company too...is there any hope that the old KISS (keep it simple stupid) methodologies may some day re-surface?  Kaiser Foundation VP even admits that the process is complicated and will never go smoothly..BD 

I HAVE not dreaded thin envelopes so much since applying to college. Skip to next paragraph Joel Castillo They are showing up with alarming regularity lately: forms from our health insurance company inexplicably denying payment or only partly paying for something we believed was covered. We read the codes and try to figure out why we are paid $30 for a $300 visit; they may as well have been written in Latin. And when we try calling, all too often we end up in a voice mail maze.

“Insurance is really complicated and really expensive, so it’s never going to go smoothly,” said Gary Claxton, vice president of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.

I would like to place the blame squarely with the insurance companies, which use language so dense and provide such a confusing panoply of options that few people can burrow through it. But consumers can only do so much. Insurance companies are going to make mistakes, if only because of the sheer number of forms they process daily. I have had errors as basic as the wrong Social Security number (and therefore the bill sent to me was meant for a different patient).

Hands to Hold When Health Care Becomes a Maze - New York Times