'Tis the Season

No, not of holly and jolly but of Open Enrollment. It's that time of year when Corporate America tells its employees that their benefits aren't changing from last year (or at least not really) and employees & spouses get to travel down the road of guessing"Which plan will cost me the least amount of money this year?" And let's just face it, your odds are better in Vegas.

Because of my extensive use of health care systems in multiple countries, I have the pleasure of registering for health insurance in our family. Oh, how I loathe this responsibility. In my mind, there is nothing worse than dealing with health insurance companies who do their best to deny you of any small benefit you may be entitled to, but the annual selection of which company to dutifully give your money to is never anything short of a pain.

2008 is already turning out to be true to form. I just logged on to the new online registration system through Chris's work (name withheld just in case!). The first step of registration was a relative success and I am safely guarding my username and password just in case someone wants to change my health care selections at the last minute??? Well, I'm just following instructions.

There is supposed to be this slick new tool that will compare the costs of the available plans for you online. I was really quite excited about this for a couple of reasons. First, the Benefits-At-A-Glance that they gave us requires a magnifying glass to read it. Second, this means I don't have to plug it in to my spreadsheet. Yes, I do have a model for picking our health insurance and it's been useful in the past. You'd be surprised at your break-even so splurging, but I digress.

Any guesses as to what the tool told me? Well, if Swing Low, Sweet Chariot is any indication, I won't wait for your response. I'll just tell you. They're all the same cost. Isn't that amazing! Why? you ask? Well, turns out there are no premiums attached to our available plans. Now, the only place where I've ever gotten free health insurance was when I worked for the University of Wisconsin during grad school, and I have to say, that was a little ridiculous. I could digress again but I'll refrain. Somehow I think something is missing. Now I'm just waiting for a response to my email.

Who knows, maybe I'm wrong? Then again, I'd be willing to bet it has something to do with us being on a different insurance plan than the majority of the company since we now live out of the country. In some respects, it should be easier because it doesn't matter if we pick a PPO or a PPO with a co-pay because there is no such thing as a PPO in Hong Kong. We have to pay everything out of pocket and then get reimbursed. Doesn't that sound like fun? Not so much. Ugh!

So what's the answer? With an election year coming up, I wish I knew or had a solid opinion actually. Our friends from the UK don't have very many good things to say about the National Health Service there. It's fine if you have a god-awful emergency or don't have anything wrong with you, but if you have any sort of chronic, non-emergency type problem, good luck getting the treatment that you need. Here in HK, there's a bit of a mix of both worlds but most people purchase supplemental health insurance because the insurance provided by their employers generally isn't good enough to cover any actual problems. There's very good doctors and hospitals here and they are largely affordable by U.S. standards, even the ones that cater to Westerners (i.e. they speak English). But I know quite a few people who don't know which hospital they are going to deliver their babies at in a month or so when they're due. Women/doctors actually have to reserve a spot on a specific day at a hospital for delivery and it is not uncommon for the fully English-speaking hospitals to be booked up. This because there are floods of mainland Chinese who come to HK to have their babies so that they can be HK citizens.

Really, every system has its positives and negatives and there are trade offs. Chris and I are fortunate to have relatively good health care coverage available to us, all things considered, but I would give just about anything to not have to ever deal with health insurance companies. So the saga will continue, I suppose. I just hope my first haircut & color in HK tomorrow doesn't prove to be as dramatic.