Iknow… healthcare! The most exciting topic in the world. But ever since the Affordable Care Act website went live here in the U.S., I’ve admittedly been a bit confused. You turn on NPR, and every five minutes I’m hearing something new about the site being a frustrating disappointment to thousands of people, and my natural response is to stick my fingers in my ears and say, “Lalalalalalala.” I just don’t want to deal with it. So mature, I know.
But deal with it we must, so I recently used the website to figure out how this would affect my family (admittedly, I didn’t have a problem navigating the site). It easily spit out the plans we qualified for starting next year—there were 52, to be exact.
And you know what I read? Gobbledygook. Jargon. The stuff pretty much read like Charlie Brown’s teacher in my head. Even though I’ve dealt with health insurance quite a bit this year (thanks to my surprise knee surgery from a ski accident), I’m still left pretty confused when I navigate these waters.
We’re mostly self-employed, so we pay for health insurance out of pocket. And it hurts. Honestly, I’m grateful for the option after the avalanche of medical expenses this spring. But I’ll be honest—health care drives me crazy, the system frustrates me, and we’re often left feeling more alone than covered.
So this is why I’m really glad we have an insurance guy. He’s local to us, and though he’s got a plateful of clients and more work than one person can probably handle, he’s easy enough to reach by phone when we have a question.
We found him several years ago using Dave Ramsey’s Endorsed Local Provider (ELP) service, and we liked him immediately. He was honest, put us under absolutely no pressure, and answered our questions as though they were the most perfectly logical questions in the world (even though we felt dumb for asking them—aren’t we supposed to be grownups and know this stuff already?).
Honestly, as we look to the future and navigate the murky waters involving our healthcare options, I really am so grateful to have someone on our side, someone to continue translating the confusing healthcare jargon into Normal Words.
Our insurance guy has been worth every penny because I know he’s not trying to sell us something we don’t need. He knows our family, knows our quirky lifestyle, and has bent over backwards to find the right coverage we need. Even if it isn’t perfect.
This is one tool that’s really helped simplify an otherwise confusing part of life: an insurance guy. Through him, we can better understand our healthcare options, pick the best one that best serves our family’s needs, and let him take care of the details while we move on with our life.
Of course, this doesn’t mean I just hit cruise control and drive through this part of life on autopilot—I still want to learn what’s best for our family. We’ll see what happens over the next few months… I’m more than a little curious how all the uncertainty is going to play out.
How are you handling the current healthcare situation? For those of you in other countries, what’s worked for you? Any tips or tools you find useful for simplifying this otherwise confusing part of being a grownup?
This post is sponsored by Dave Ramsey’s Endorsed Local Providers.
