CareFirst, Insurance Disruption, and the Zen of Faxing

tl;dr: a simple change being anything but simple turns a health insurance management problem into a moment of reflection. By way of a fax machine.

I needed to make one change to our health insurance policy.

All I wanted to do was switch the “Primary Subscriber” from me to my wife.

Seems like an easy ask, right?

Go on the website, click a check box, and click “Save.” Then, move on.

After all, it is 2020 and this type of simple account management is about as simple as it gets.

Expectations vs. Reality

The Buddha teaches that desire is the root of suffering.

After my experience with CareFirst Blue Cross of Maryland, I have a deeper appreciation for why.

My desire was to spend about 48 seconds on this task and move on to other issues.

Instead, my reality has extended into a multi-week ordeal that involves multiple forms which need to be printed out, mailed, or faxed.

I will acknowledge that even having health insurance, particularly these days, is something for which I am extremely grateful.

But given the level of service experience with CareFirst, this is like saying “well, I know you were expecting a MacBook Pro, but this typewriter will help you write your letter, so here you go.”

The reality of the customer experience from CareFirst is so vastly different from any reasonable expectation that, unless you are Takujū Kosen , suffering is pretty much inevitable.

Opportunity in the Suffering

Over the course of these few weeks as I’ve sent notes, received confusing, incomplete, or in some cases, flat out wrong information from CareFirst, I’ve had moments of technology whiplash.

When a rep told me :

“you really need to fax this document to the member services team because if they get the form that you filled out in the mail (which was based on incorrect information), it will cause even more problems for you.”

CareFirst

I thought,

“Ok, I know they are pretty much a monopoly provider, but there’s got to be a disruption opportunity.”

Given the vast workforce disruption, the health crisis ongoing, and technological innovation, I wondered:

“where is the Robinhood of health insurance?”

Apple and Google are coming into this market and I have to believe that “Health InsurTech” is going to be a thing.

Heck, Fitbit knows more about my health on a daily basis than my insurance provider.

In a world where data is gold/oil/Bitcoin, that has got to matter for something.

My friend, Jeremiah Owyang, has an excellent report on the $4.2 trillion market for wellness tech. CareFirst doesn’t play there at all.

Someone is going to make a lot of money at the expense of insurance companies. Not today, not tomorrow, and yes, regulation is a big deal, but when a company’s only means of comms to change subscriber information is via mail or fax, that’s like having a huge backdoor open to your fort.

It may not be easy to get to, but once the army is there, it’s game over.

I hate to say it, but I’ll feel a fair amount of schadenfreude when CareFirst is disrupted.

A Trip Down Memory Lane

When I said, “oh, wow, I don’t have a fax machine,” she said, “well, you can go to Staples and since it’s an 800 number, they won’t charge you.”

And I’m thinking to myself,

“ok, I need to go during a pandemic to an office supply store to fax a document to my health insurance provider.”

I did ask her (and this rep was great), “given that it’s 2020, do you ever have moments where you can’t believe you need to even tell people that?”

There’s a multi-function printer/scanner in the house which, I had forgotten, actually has a fax function in it. I invited my children to come and watch the fax process as they had never seen one.

Only one of them cared at all to take a look and, after 20 seconds of watching the paper get scanned and hearing the beep of the phone line, she said something about “ancient” and left.

Needless to say, the transmission failed because I have a VoIP plan and there’s a data packet issue there.

Finally, I ended up paying $1.99 to an internet faxing service to send in the information. That’s on top of the extra money this process is costing us (since step 2 is to remove me from this particular policy).

The Path to Liberation is Full of Faxes?

Am I pissed off at CareFirst? Yes. Is some of this post pure emotional ranting? You bet it is.

But that doesn’t change the fact that this is annoying.

Yet, in some respects, I should be grateful to CareFirst because they forced me to deal with my own shenpa, that feeling like a mosquito bite, of an itch that just needs to be scratched but can’t be relieved.

So, I saw the opportunity to work on the practice of patience.

On the other hand, maybe that’s the brilliance of CareFirst’s strategy.

Make the customer experience so challenging that the only response is to accept, let go, and be patient. By having no desire and thus no expectation about how CareFirst will enable me to get simple jobs done, they are shunting me towards a life with less suffering.

I suppose that leads to lower healthcare bills and more profits for them.

Who would have thought that a visit to 1995 to fax a document would be the path to wellness in 2020?

Skillful attitudes of mind are the key to facing potentially explosive situations and the ongoing highs and lows of life and practice. In fact, recognizing these attitudes and cultivating their antidotes is the foundation for all spiritual growth.

—Steve Armstrong, “Got Attitude?”