Sunday, February 17, 2013

The best Superbowl ad ever

I loved this one so much that the year it ran I brought the videotape (!) of the game to school and showed it to all my classes. More than once. The repeats were by popular demand.


1 comment:

Jackie Strange said...

BTW, the first job I ever had (for pay) was with EDS. It was a temp job and I only worked there for a week or two, but still. Ross Perot and I have a connection. We were reading insurance claim forms and writing codes for how much should be paid. We had a giant book.

We looked up the service/procedure and the location - Dallas for example, would pay a different amount for the same procedure from say, Abilene and wrote in a code from the book. The book also listed how much the insurance company considered a "reasonable and customary" charge.

Anyone who remembers the way health insurance worked back then (1966), you went to the doctor, paid the full amount of whatever the doctor charged, got a receipt. Then you got a form from your insurance company - if you didn't happen to have one you had to write or call them and they'd mail it to you. You filled out the form, attached your receipt, mailed it off, and waited for the insurance company to mail you a check. Most health insurance promised to pay 70% of your costs. So if you went to a doctor, say a specialist, who charged $100 for an office visit, you might think you would (eventually) get a check for $70.

But wait! the fine print said, 70% of the "reasonable and customary" charge for that service/procedure in your area. And your insurance company had decided that $60 was a reasonable fee for an office visit. So you'd get a check (eventually) for $42, not $70.

In my brief stint working for EDS, thumbing through the giant book, writing in the codes, the ting I noticed right away was that the charges on the attached receipts were ALWAYS much more than what the book said was "reasonable and customary."

I've thought health insurance was a con ever since.

So anyone who thinks that sometime in the olden days, when - oh yes, don't forget that health insurance never covered prescription drugs back then - health insurance was so much better than now, before managed care, HMO's, Obamacare, etc.

No, it sucked. As bad as insurance companies can be now, they sucked even worse then.