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Health insurance bill is a great example. But an even better example is the garbage that I get from my insurance provider a week or so after any member of my fa

Health insurance bill is a great example. But an even better example is the garbage that I get from my insurance provider a week or so after any member of my family visits a doctor. It usually has on it somewhere… THIS IS NOT A BILL Then what is it? What it is is a piece of paper filled with meaningless jargon, and now I have to figure out what to do with it. Stop wasting paper, time and money unless I need to do something. If it's something I might conceivably need someday to prove I was there, then let me just go on your damn site and download a PDF when that hypothetical day comes.

mattgreenrocks 12y ago
I wonder about these too. Let's assume that all carriers are cheapskates, yet they send them. Perhaps they're meant to convey to the customer, "look at how much we're saving you!" while simultaneously maintaining the illusion that Health Care is Very Expensive?
- twistedpair 12y ago
  Junk mail keeps the USPS alive. Really.
  - mattgreenrocks 12y ago
    I don't think it's junk mail, per se. Real junk mail, AFAIK, requires the senders to pay USPS money to send. Why would insurance companies (who are cost-sensitive, or so they want us to believe) pay to send useless mail that doesn't generate any additional revenue?
    - weaksauce 12y ago
      Regulation is the likely answer.
    - dragonwriter 12y ago
      > Why would insurance companies (who are cost-sensitive, or so they want us to believe) pay to send useless mail that doesn't generate any additional revenue? Because it reduces costs and risks. First, because I believe that in most cases where the insurance company is billed it is legally required, so there are noncompliance costs, but also because customers sometimes do need them (perhaps less often now, but in multiple coverage situations it used to at least occasionally happen that the beneficiary would have to do coordination of benefits between primary and secondary insurer rather than providers or insurers handling that, and you can send a lot of no-decision-involved mail for the cost of dealing with occasional request plus dealing with on-demand mail.
melvinmt 12y ago
It's a receipt.
JumpCrisscross 12y ago
It's a disclosure. It may or not be legally required. It would, nonetheless, be advised by their counsel as a way of mitigating liability with billing errors, etc.
dragonwriter 12y ago
> THIS IS NOT A BILL > Then what is it? Most likely an Explanation of Benefits. http://healthinsurance.about.com/od/healthinsurancebasics/a/understanding_EOB.htm http://healthinsurance.about.com/od/healthinsurancebasics/a/...

mattgreenrocks 12y ago

I wonder about these too. Let's assume that all carriers are cheapskates, yet they send them. Perhaps they're meant to convey to the customer, "look at how much we're saving you!" while simultaneously maintaining the illusion that Health Care is Very Expensive?

twistedpair 12y ago
Junk mail keeps the USPS alive. Really.
- mattgreenrocks 12y ago
  I don't think it's junk mail, per se. Real junk mail, AFAIK, requires the senders to pay USPS money to send. Why would insurance companies (who are cost-sensitive, or so they want us to believe) pay to send useless mail that doesn't generate any additional revenue?
  - weaksauce 12y ago
    Regulation is the likely answer.
  - dragonwriter 12y ago
    > Why would insurance companies (who are cost-sensitive, or so they want us to believe) pay to send useless mail that doesn't generate any additional revenue? Because it reduces costs and risks. First, because I believe that in most cases where the insurance company is billed it is legally required, so there are noncompliance costs, but also because customers sometimes do need them (perhaps less often now, but in multiple coverage situations it used to at least occasionally happen that the beneficiary would have to do coordination of benefits between primary and secondary insurer rather than providers or insurers handling that, and you can send a lot of no-decision-involved mail for the cost of dealing with occasional request plus dealing with on-demand mail.

melvinmt 12y ago

It's a receipt.

JumpCrisscross 12y ago

It's a disclosure. It may or not be legally required. It would, nonetheless, be advised by their counsel as a way of mitigating liability with billing errors, etc.

dragonwriter 12y ago

> THIS IS NOT A BILL > Then what is it? Most likely an Explanation of Benefits. http://healthinsurance.about.com/od/healthinsurancebasics/a/understanding_EOB.htm http://healthinsurance.about.com/od/healthinsurancebasics/a/...