On Insurance and Benefits: An American Perspective

    I've been at work for over three hours now.  I've not done any work. Shame! Shame! Shame! Yes, I'm a horrible person, but, if you'll deal with my horrendous defiance of hustle culture for a moment, I'll explain. You see, I had to deal with the dreaded HR. To be fair my HR department is filled with lovely people whom I trust as far as I can throw. Currently, they've left me in the lurch with a payroll deadline looming and a lot of following up I will have to do on my own.

    I had a procedure done for which I needed to take two weeks off of work to recover. I submitted FMLA paperwork to HR before I took off. Or at least I thought I did. I had to leave it with the office staff at the doctor's office for them to get to the right people to be filled out and faxed back over to my HR. Fax. FAX! Insert eyeroll here. This is of course where the communication breakdown began. As the days crept towards my time off, no one at any point notified me that they had not yet received the paperwork. It was my general mistrust of humans that won out and I called to follow up myself. "Oh, no we haven't received that yet." WHAT?? When were you going to tell me?? Apparently, never was the answer to that. So I collected the information I needed and called the doctor's office to follow up. They immediately got it taken care of. That's how following up with a phone call yourself works, for those who have struggled with relying on other people to do things. Other people won't do things unless someone prods them. That's you, bearer of insurance, you have to be the one to move things along so it actually gets done. It is annoying, but if you bite the bullet and do it, your insurance will cover a lot of things they would just deny on a knee jerk reaction to anyone who dares make a claim. Sucks but that's the solution, call and confront them directly. And when I say "confront" I mean talk to them in the most polite way you know how. Be cooperative, but not a pushover. (Studies have been done on the Prisoner's Dilemma that show that being cooperative but not a pushover is the most winning strategy. It works in other situations too as it turns out.)

    But I digress... FMLA paperwork safely in the hands of HR (I called them too to make sure they had it. They did, it was faxed, FAXED!, literally the day before I had to take off.) I went to my procedure and through the recovery process with a clear mind. I should have known better.

    I returned to an email from HR because of course I did. They need more documentation. For what, I inquired. The answers were unclear because of course they were. Much back and forth happened over the following weeks. I heard nothing for days on end. I followed up to find out out this person or that person never received what they were supposed to have received. It has taken until today, three weeks later for me to get my hands on the paperwork which was sent and never received. I sent it myself. It has been received, because of course it has. That's how following up yourself works. 

    In the meantime, I ventured into my absence submission web site to submit another absence request (a story for another post), wherein I found something I did not want to find, but was probably best that I did find it. My absences for this time off did not reflect the specific type of day I had put in for, specifically FMLA. Some of the days were marked as FMLA, but some were...not. Much more back and forth happened, concluding with a very difficult to hear phone call to HR. I ended up having to call one person's cell phone (at their request) for a full explanation. Said person was chaperoning a field trip for their niece and was on the bus heading to their destination. Hence the noisy call. As it turns out, due to my contract only some of my days are approved under FMLA and the rest have to go in as short term disability. Which, unfortunately, is only a percentage of my full pay. On the plus side, I had just received a retention bonus which will cover the difference. Call me Even Steven.

    But this post is more than just a description of my... interesting few weeks, dear reader. Oh, no! For, you see, I have come up with a solution. Maybe not THE solution, but I'm inclined to believe my thoughts on the matter are grounded in a fairly strong basis. That basis: education. Specifically public education. For all modern society has done to villainize public education it remains one of the most effective, including on the financial front, solutions to a public need. Without going too much into the history of public education, it has always been a high priority in this country. Up until recently anyway, which is a topic for another post. Despite our drop in the standings, we traditionally have had one of the world's highest literacy rates. 

    There have long been cries for universal healthcare. Many first world countries have it, in fact the US is one of the very, very few first world countries that doesn't, and except for a few complaints about wait times, it has resulted in better outcomes for patients. As if we, here in the US, don't have to deal with long wait times in our "better" privatized system! But why do we always have to look at things in such stark contrast? Black and white, private healthcare or federally based healthcare? This country has such a hard time dealing with shades of grey. Public education can be our guide. We already have the framework for how to implement my idea.

    Instead of universal healthcare (such as what veterans have set up), we run publicly funded healthcare like education. But our reading and math scores are down! We are falling far below other countries! Yes, yes, I know. We do need to work on fixing public education, but it has strong bones. It doesn't need a complete overhaul, just a little paint and maybe fix a leaky pipe or two. We don't have to tear the whole thing down. And those strong bones can be copied as the foundation for public healthcare. 

    Locally run, with local needs as a focal point. Locally funded, with supplemental funding and oversight at both the state and federal level. The power remains in each community with the backing of the state and the feds to help keep things running as intended. (And following all state and federal guidelines to ensure free and fair access.) Public healthcare and public education operating under the same framework. I'm no expert, so I may not see all the issues that may arise with this set up. But our current system is more expensive and has worse outcomes than other countries in the free world. What could it hurt to give it a try?