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The Very Stressful Stress Manager
Jul. 10th, 2010 11:17 amI recently mentioned that, in order to receive "full status" on my work's health insurance program, I have to complete a course littered with hurdles and chicanes. Supposedly, these programs (for which I am eligible for four or five) will show me steps to correct the unhealthy lifestyles with which I am currently destroying my productive longevity and get me on the path to Healthy Living(TM) . . . or, more specifically and honestly, to reduce the cost my employer is contractually obligated to provide me.
We've been doing this program for three years now. At first, the requirements were simple. There are three standards of status: gold, silver, and bronze. Fill out the initial form and Shazam! you're a Bronze Age winner. Participate in a "program" and Voila! you get the Silver Standard. Actually complete some goals along the way and Ta Da! I got the Gold standard.
There is a financial "incentive" (as much as the promise of beating someone with a stick with progressive intensity if they don't do what they're told is an "incentive"). Gold standard folks pay fewer deductibles and lower co-pays. For the very healthy, there would therefore be no reason to even participate. Anticipate actually going to a doctor once a year, though, and your out-of-pocket expenses increase with your decreased level of participation.
While a laudable goal, there is a sneaky long game in the midst of all this calming talk and helpful hinting. Each year, the act of successfully obtaining a Golden Ticket have gotten progressively more difficult. I thought this would happen. It seems I'm proving to be right. This strategy gives my employer the option of blaming the participants for their increased out-of-pocket costs. In fact, my head employer was on the radio. He first claimed that the program had reduced medical costs by $22 million for the county. I think he's probably right about that. Sadly, this means that $22 million in expenses has probably been shifted to the insured through increased out-of-pocket costs. When asked about the increasing difficulty keeping full benefits, he dismissively said that those who refuse to participate in the program -- or who fail to complete the increasingly onerous requirements -- just "don't want to be healthy".
Yes, he's a politician. He's adept at obfuscation, at misdirection. Rather than simply blather about this mendacity, I've decided to continue what I started in that one-off link above and let you be the judge. I'm going to copy the suggested stress management topics from the program, along with background "education" provided by the program as needed, and then post my journal responses rebutting their claim. Are they, as I suspect, pushing snake oil notions or double-plus good self-help duck speak? Or are the lessons provided actually useful and I'm just a curmudgeonly bastard for not listening to good advice when it's offered? I'll let you be the judge.
I don't believe it. I intended to do exactly what I wrote I would do above, I really did. But it seems I can't.
Somehow, with this mornings random keystrokes and link hunting, I completed the program. It didn't tell me what I actually did to complete everything, no. It just, well, "completed" me. While that's good news finance-wise, it seems that once I crossed that unseen finish line and completed the program the system deleted all my journal entries. It's now asking me to re-enroll in the program, as if I have never visited their site before.
Folks, imagine this: LJ has a program where, once you complete a hundred, a thousand, a million entries (insert your arbitrary number here), it deletes all of those entries and has you re-enter as a new user. Just imagine this. That's what has just happened to me.
I just sent them an angry letter demanding my entries back, saying how losing them would be unacceptably stressful. One would assume a program designed to reduce a person's stress wouldn't constantly subject them to more. There's some real and poignant irony in their doing this, don't you think? For that, they've just earned my "Language abuse! No Biscuit!" tag.
Bastards.
We've been doing this program for three years now. At first, the requirements were simple. There are three standards of status: gold, silver, and bronze. Fill out the initial form and Shazam! you're a Bronze Age winner. Participate in a "program" and Voila! you get the Silver Standard. Actually complete some goals along the way and Ta Da! I got the Gold standard.There is a financial "incentive" (as much as the promise of beating someone with a stick with progressive intensity if they don't do what they're told is an "incentive"). Gold standard folks pay fewer deductibles and lower co-pays. For the very healthy, there would therefore be no reason to even participate. Anticipate actually going to a doctor once a year, though, and your out-of-pocket expenses increase with your decreased level of participation.
While a laudable goal, there is a sneaky long game in the midst of all this calming talk and helpful hinting. Each year, the act of successfully obtaining a Golden Ticket have gotten progressively more difficult. I thought this would happen. It seems I'm proving to be right. This strategy gives my employer the option of blaming the participants for their increased out-of-pocket costs. In fact, my head employer was on the radio. He first claimed that the program had reduced medical costs by $22 million for the county. I think he's probably right about that. Sadly, this means that $22 million in expenses has probably been shifted to the insured through increased out-of-pocket costs. When asked about the increasing difficulty keeping full benefits, he dismissively said that those who refuse to participate in the program -- or who fail to complete the increasingly onerous requirements -- just "don't want to be healthy".
Yes, he's a politician. He's adept at obfuscation, at misdirection. Rather than simply blather about this mendacity, I've decided to continue what I started in that one-off link above and let you be the judge. I'm going to copy the suggested stress management topics from the program, along with background "education" provided by the program as needed, and then post my journal responses rebutting their claim. Are they, as I suspect, pushing snake oil notions or double-plus good self-help duck speak? Or are the lessons provided actually useful and I'm just a curmudgeonly bastard for not listening to good advice when it's offered? I'll let you be the judge.
I don't believe it. I intended to do exactly what I wrote I would do above, I really did. But it seems I can't.
Somehow, with this mornings random keystrokes and link hunting, I completed the program. It didn't tell me what I actually did to complete everything, no. It just, well, "completed" me. While that's good news finance-wise, it seems that once I crossed that unseen finish line and completed the program the system deleted all my journal entries. It's now asking me to re-enroll in the program, as if I have never visited their site before.
Folks, imagine this: LJ has a program where, once you complete a hundred, a thousand, a million entries (insert your arbitrary number here), it deletes all of those entries and has you re-enter as a new user. Just imagine this. That's what has just happened to me.
I just sent them an angry letter demanding my entries back, saying how losing them would be unacceptably stressful. One would assume a program designed to reduce a person's stress wouldn't constantly subject them to more. There's some real and poignant irony in their doing this, don't you think? For that, they've just earned my "Language abuse! No Biscuit!" tag.
Bastards.