Insurance talk

It's open registration at Truman. Until tomorrow. After tomorrow the University can get back to all of the other things it does. I can't believe how much energy has gone into deciding our insurance options this year.

Some of it is because we have a new insurance option, a health savings account. Most of it is because we've received scant information about how our new option could work. And when we do get info, it all contradicts itself. We don't have co-pays on medication, we do have co-pays on medication. You can spend your HSA money on the same things you could use FSA money for, you can't.

Faculty members are scanning the IRS web site, checking out the guidelines because the don't believe the benefits director and frankly the representative from the insurance company was really uninformed. Some of the things we've been told seem to contradict what the IRS says an HSA can do. So faculty members clump up in little groups speculating what will happen if the benefits director discovers that it is illegal for the insurance to actually provide what we've been promised.

Everyone knows the answer of course. If the promises contradict the law, or even just the plain desires of the insurance company, we're screwed (it is insurance after all).

Somehow, I've gotten a reputation among the faculty for being an insurance expert. I get emails and phone calls asking me for opinions, or for the temperature of my particular brand of speculation. It really is an interesting question; so interesting that I had one of my math classes discuss it (as part of a unit on games of conflict). But still, I'll be glad that tomorrow is the deadline; the whole thing is a bit distracting.