Open enrollment

Ah, the 2-hour info session in the cafeteria about next year’s health plan options. The capstone of befuddlement month.

Our health plan is switching from the Blue Cross network that covers every provider in Massachusetts to CIGNA’s Open Access Plus/Carelink network which actually uses one of the Tufts Health Plan networks in Massachusetts. They won’t tell us which one. We will have three logos on our insurance cards: CIGNA, Tufts, and Carelink. Each doctor’s office will have to guess which one applies in a fun game of three-logo Monte.

Someone asked whether a doctor who is in the Tufts network and not in the CIGNA network will be considered in-network under our insurance. The CIGNA rep said yes. A few minutes later, someone asked whether a doctor needs to be in both the Tufts network and the CIGNA network to be considered in-network. The CIGNA rep said yes. So the person who asked the first question pointed out that those answers could not both be true. The CIGNA rep shrugged his shoulders. Somehow I suspect the 200 employees in the cafeteria failed to achieve health plan enlightenment.

A number of people pointed out that the options for finding out whether doctors are in-network—calling the doctors, calling CIGNA, using the CIGNA web site, using the Tufts web site—all result in different answers. In fact, calling CIGNA a second time often results in a different answer. The stated solution was to use the printed provider directory which is not yet available. Left unstated was the fact that nothing about the current status of a provider indicates whether that provider will be in-network or not after January 1. My chiropractor is considering dropping Tufts at the start of 2008, and is contractually obligated by Tufts not to inform his patients ahead of time if he decides to do that.

We were told in this info session that we should figure out now what all of our health care expenses for 2008 will be. Apparently HR believes that if we concentrate really hard, we can discern our future illnesses and injuries and approximately what they will cost. We were told that it would be better not to have significant medical expenses in the first part of the year. Apparently HR believes that we can schedule medical emergencies. We were told that various unused funds in our health plan will roll over into 2009, but we were not told that (at least some of) these funds will only actually roll over if HR decides to offer the same plans with the same insurers in 2009. And we were told that there will be various gaps in dental coverage and prescription drug delivery, so we should try not to need any dental work in the last few weeks of 2007 or any prescription drugs in the first few weeks of 2008.

The news wasn’t all confusing. There was a very clear PowerPoint slide explaining that the retirement plan was being frozen as of January 1. No uncertainty there.

To make up for the retirement plan contributions evaporating, they are contributing 4% to a 401K. Based on your 2008 salary. Oh, by the way, and this isn’t on the handout, only if you’re still employed as of early 2009. Nothing like ending the info session with an unsubtle hint that the company will see an additional savings by firing everyone before the end of next year. That’s just the piquant touch of spite that rounds off the bitterness and bafflement with undertones of discontent. Robert Parker would definitely approve.