“I’m Trying to Give You Money”

I didn’t say it this time.

I was proud of myself.

Usually, when I’m trying to buy something and the business I’m attempting to patronize makes that impossible (or just difficult), I say, “I’m trying to give you money!” This time, I didn’t say that.

I just sent a long message that began, “In case anyone at (my health insurance provider) actually reads this:”

Basically, Oscar (alright, I’ll name ‘em), a cheap health insurance provider I signed on with when I left the corporate world and didn’t want to bankrupt myself were I ever possessed to ride a scooter late at night, is hard to give money. Logistically, it is difficult to give them money. It may actually be impossible, in certain circumstances, to give them money. What happened was this:

Mrs. NIT left her job at the beginning of the month. She accepted a new job, but it doesn’t start until August. Since it had been easy for me, three years ago January, to set up health insurance with Oscar, and since Oscar was and is cheap (so cheap it made more sense/cents for me to stay on it even with the option to jump on her old work plan), we decided to just have her sign up for Oscar until her new job started, and then cancel the plan.

This did not work.

Initially, it was only some website confusion. It was unclear if she had applied for health insurance or not. As it became clear she hadn’t, we decided to call. This was when shit hit the fan.

You know those customer service calls where the automated menu doesn’t include the option you need, and then when you finally get through to someone, you get transferred three or four times fast, and then you end up on the phone with someone who doesn’t even work with the business/government entity you’re trying to contact? One of those. Finally, we ended up with a customer service rep who said that 1) Mrs. NIT couldn’t just sign up for her own plan, she had to join mine, 2) Mrs. NIT would be a dependent, and 3) she would message us how to submit our marriage license and then, once we’d submitted it, call us right back. That day. 1 and 2 were a little confusing (Mrs. NIT, shockingly, makes more money than her NIT blogger husband, making the “dependent” thing odd but probably inconsequential), but 3 was the problem. Because it didn’t really happen. I got a message saying, “Hi Stu,” and that was it. I tried sending the marriage license as an attachment. I tried asking if there was anything else they needed from me. I eventually retreated to sending messages every few minutes like, “Hello?” and “Are you there?” and “Are you ok?” and “Help”

Finally, we went to the airport, and since we were busy the whole next day, we didn’t try to contact Oscar again. Late Friday, we got a message from a different rep that just said to call the phone menu of doom again. Saw that Saturday. Tried. They were closed.

Long story short, Mrs. NIT has health insurance again as of this coming Wednesday, so as long as she doesn’t try to fight God or wrestle a power line these next 36 hours, we’re in the clear. What eventually worked was putting her name and number into whatever that website is the Affordable Care Act made, which led to an immediate phone call on our way back to the airport and, ultimately, a comparable health plan to the one we were trying to buy (we also tried buying an explicit short-term plan that just covers the really bad stuff, the way “insurance” is definitionally supposed to work, but it turns out that if you’ve had Stage Zero skin cancer in the last five years, those are a no-go). The ACA Marketplace representative was helpful, the process was smooth, everything worked the way it’s designed to work. The federal government was efficient, Oscar Health was a black hole capable of sucking in even time.

It’s possible I don’t understand the health insurance industry, or business as a whole. Maybe I’m in over my head here. But it seems like if someone wants to pay you five or six hundred dollars in exchange for, in 99.9% of scenarios, absolutely nothing, you should make it possible for them to do that. This may be related to why Oscar Health’s stock is down 86% since its IPO in March of last year. It might also be related to why Oscar Health’s famous attempt to build the infamous promised-in-March-2020-but-never-fulfilled federal government website directing people to nearby Covid testing sites was scrapped before it launched. I knew Jared Kushner was slimy, with some doofus tendencies, but I did not think the doofusry would extend to his brother’s healthcare company. Kind of worried I don’t actually have functional health insurance now. As in, I have it, but could I ever actually access the coverage if I needed it? If it’s this hard to give these guys cash, it’s gotta be a whole lot harder to get any back.