Open Enrollment
So once again the time of year has come around where at my company we all have to review our benefits and decide if we want to make changes, etc.
Of course, this is also the time of year when they announce how much the employee contribution to the health insurance is going to cost next year.
I’ll give you one guess as to the direction of the price change. Oh yeah… up.
I was sitting there looking at the increase which, while not really all that much in the grand scheme of things, WILL add up to a dinner out every once in a while that could have been taken and now won’t.
But still, it got me thinking… “Hey now… I don’t smoke, I don’t drink, I exercise every day and eat my veggies. I only visit the doctor’s office four times a year to get my birth control shot… Why can’t I get a discount on this stuff?”
There are many places that do give discounts for “healthy behaviors,” but my company does not. We all pay the same, regardless.
This is infinitely more fair.
But my knee-jerk reaction is… hey, I barely even USE the health program, why do I have to keep paying more and more?
And I can see that this reaction is exactly how we have ended up with these programs that have gone far beyond giving people who workout on a regular basis a bit of a break and all the way over to actively penalizing people who do not.
It’s an easy path to walk from “OK, you pay $5 less per paycheck because we see you on the treadmill every day” to “Well now, we’ve never seen you in the company gym, so you have to pay $5 MORE.”
And THE WHOLE POINT of insurance pools is for everyone to get together and pay in the same while some people end up getting more benefit than others.
My car insurance, for example. For a few years, until we learned that you simply never lock a convertible, we were getting the top replaced once a year because someone would cut it to see if there was anything inside worth stealing.
Nobody ever came around and accused me of “Taking more than my share” of the car insurance pool. My rates never went up just because I claimed a new roof every year. It was just part of the process.
So, I will pay my increased health insurance premiums, but I will not lobby for my company to give discounts if you can prove you exercise 30 minutes a day or whatever. And I hope that if my company DOES come out with such a program, that I am able to resist the siren song of discounts and keep doing what is really the right thing, which is paying my share to make sure that everyone can get quality health care no matter what their state of health.
You rock!
I wish more people had this attitude of looking out for the group and doing the right thing.
Great piece, but I have a question. I thought that making claims on car insurance did increase your rates. I know people who won’t claim minor damage to their car because it will raise their rates, and risky drivers traditionally have higher rates.
Is that not the case?
Sorry, I have to play devil’s advocate on this one.
But I love your attitude.
Peace,
Shannon
Cut roofs are not accidents, and as such cannot be used to raise the comprehensive coverage rates.
Actually, by that logic, I should pay MORE for my health insurance as the Derby vastly increases my chances of having an accident
Ah, okay… so really, it’s a matter of certain risk factor costing more than others, and some risk factors being ignored completely. It does seem like no insurance company can include ALL risk factors in their rate increase calculus, so it would be best to spread the cost out. I wonder if, in the case of the derby, they the health benefits of the sport somehow outweigh the risks of it. We need an actuarial table nerd to sort this out for us.
Peace,
Shannon
Actually, our car insurance just changed our glass coverage because my husband had too many claims for windshields. We did have glass coverage with no deductible, now we have glass coverage with $250 deductible, not only on his vehicle, but also on mine (I’ve replaced one windshield, he’s replaced 4 in the last 4 years). He drives a state highway to & from work and ends up following tractors/combines which throw rocks in the spring/fall and can’t always avoid them. If they hit on the driver’s side, you don’t have a choice of having the ding repaired, you have to have it replaced. Since the last windshield cost almost $900 to replace, the deductible is a small price to pay, but it really came out of the blue, as they didn’t say anything about it until it was time to renew our policies (at least the deductible lowered the cost of our insurance….lol).
As for health insurance rates, I would rather pay a higher rate and not have to deal with meeting some arbitrary “wellness” policy in order to get a lower rate. The whole point of insurance is to spread the risks across a large group of premium payers, not for the insurance company to make huge profits at the expense of the policy holders. Too bad the insurance companies seem to have forgotten that little detail.
I truly dread this time of the year, which usually comes in the Spring for us. My husband, who is normally the insurance carrier, works in software and doesn’t always stay in one place for all that long, so it always seems as if we’re looking at new insurance every other year or so. And sometimes it’s much better than others. We have very good insurance now, so I’m trying to get everything medically done before January, as he’s seeking work elsewhere and who knows what we’ll end up? Obviously this isn’t the format to discuss the multitude of issues I have with insurance companies in this country, but I will say that dealing with insurance is almost as scary as going to the darned doctor!! It takes a stiff drink, a deep breath, and finding some intestinal fortitude just to get started. Then you pray not to get sick and actually have need of the insurance you’re paying for. The whole idea of discounts for exercising, weigh loss, and other behavioral changes is such a complicated mess. I, too, hope to never have to deal with that type of coverage.