Open season, huh?
It's open season on health plans, er, open season on employees, I mean, open season for employees to select new health plans.
[insert long, obscenity-filled rant on the idiocy of the American health care system here]
We have several choices, but for various reasons, our choice is really down to Kaiser HMO and CIGNA PPO. If you're lucky enough to not know what those mean, think of it as "Only our doctors, only our building, don't even think about going anywhere else" and "Network that we currently have that includes all of our doctors".
Kaiser is $100 a month cheaper and their main building is almost literally around the corner from us, so the "only our building" bit isn't a problem. I think it's an 8-minute drive and that's mostly if I get stuck at the light at Connecticut.
But it means leaving all of our doctors, which Avi is thrilled with 'cause he hates his, while I'm ambivalent about mine, but I love the kids' pediatrician :( So I'm most stressed about that. We've been going there since Yael was about 2 and they've taken good care of us.
My in-laws have had Kaiser for decades and been very pleased. I had a good experience the several years I had Kaiser. The big downside is that the hospital they use is Holy Cross, which several people I know hate with the fire of a thousand fiery suns after bad experiences there.
CIGNA isn't perfect by any means, but they've been fairly decent as insurance companies go. But I'm not sure it's worth spending $100 more a month to keep the pediatrician and the possibility of going to a different hospital :( (With Kaiser, in an emergency, you go to whichever one is closer, then they move you once you're stable. My FIL went through that once years ago.)
I've been sitting here comparing coverage and such and it looks like it's all pretty similar. I don't see any giant red flags. We're sure as hell not going to need that infertility coverage CIGNA has ;) Kaiser has slightly lower co-pays and prescription costs and slightly higher testing costs. And they really do have the convenience factor of having everything together in one building that's just on the other side of the park. I drive by it every time I go to the bank.
Okay, thanks for letting me talk this out. I think I've convinced myself that I'm going to have to suck it up and accept a fairly major change. ::deep breath:: Maybe I'll go take a Klonopin now ;)
This entry was originally posted at http://mara.dreamwidth.org/202100.html, where there are
comments. Please feel free to comment either here or there.
[insert long, obscenity-filled rant on the idiocy of the American health care system here]
We have several choices, but for various reasons, our choice is really down to Kaiser HMO and CIGNA PPO. If you're lucky enough to not know what those mean, think of it as "Only our doctors, only our building, don't even think about going anywhere else" and "Network that we currently have that includes all of our doctors".
Kaiser is $100 a month cheaper and their main building is almost literally around the corner from us, so the "only our building" bit isn't a problem. I think it's an 8-minute drive and that's mostly if I get stuck at the light at Connecticut.
But it means leaving all of our doctors, which Avi is thrilled with 'cause he hates his, while I'm ambivalent about mine, but I love the kids' pediatrician :( So I'm most stressed about that. We've been going there since Yael was about 2 and they've taken good care of us.
My in-laws have had Kaiser for decades and been very pleased. I had a good experience the several years I had Kaiser. The big downside is that the hospital they use is Holy Cross, which several people I know hate with the fire of a thousand fiery suns after bad experiences there.
CIGNA isn't perfect by any means, but they've been fairly decent as insurance companies go. But I'm not sure it's worth spending $100 more a month to keep the pediatrician and the possibility of going to a different hospital :( (With Kaiser, in an emergency, you go to whichever one is closer, then they move you once you're stable. My FIL went through that once years ago.)
I've been sitting here comparing coverage and such and it looks like it's all pretty similar. I don't see any giant red flags. We're sure as hell not going to need that infertility coverage CIGNA has ;) Kaiser has slightly lower co-pays and prescription costs and slightly higher testing costs. And they really do have the convenience factor of having everything together in one building that's just on the other side of the park. I drive by it every time I go to the bank.
Okay, thanks for letting me talk this out. I think I've convinced myself that I'm going to have to suck it up and accept a fairly major change. ::deep breath:: Maybe I'll go take a Klonopin now ;)
This entry was originally posted at http://mara.dreamwidth.org/202100.html, where there are
comments. Please feel free to comment either here or there.