The Third Side…

A long time ago, I had a sales manager who told me “you can’t compensate for other peoples’ ignorance.”

What he meant by that was that, when other folks make stupid decisions, I shouldn’t take it personally.

In the post below, Bob Vineyard tells of two of his clients who either bought coverage or chose not to, and the consequences of those decisions. He characterized the stories as two sides of a coin. In a flippant e-mail, I asked “only two sides?”

Well, turns out there’s a third:

Recently, I wrote a policy for a family. There were some health issues, but we were able to get coverage from one of the two more lenient carriers in this market, at what I considered a reasonable cost. After a month or so, they asked me if there was a better plan available, and I suggested that we apply to the other lenient carrier. Of course, I urged them to continue the existing plan until we had the new one in place. This shouldn’t have been a problem, since we didn’t need to send a check with the new application.

So, of course, they let the existing policy lapse, and then called me to get the new one started. And, of further course, it needed to be in place immediately.

So, we sent in the app to the other carrier, which immediately asked for additional information on the husband. Weeks later, he eventually calls the 800# that I’ve given him, to speak directly with the underwriter’s assistant, in order to provide that “additional information.”

Which information, of course, resulted in his being declined for coverage. They’ll issue a plan on the wife and kids, mind you, but not on him. And since this is PHI (Protected Health Information), I have no clue what caused the underwriter to decline coverage on him, making it even more difficult to obtain coverage elsewhere.

I just called with the “good news, bad news.” He is not a happy camper. And I feel bad for him, because I am human. But I don’t feel too bad for him, because I had – a long time ago – a good manager.

I’ll keep you posted when this is finally resolved.

I hope.