Now, I don’t know about you, but applying for health insurance is probably one of the most frustrating and stressful things I have ever had to do as an adult. You expect it to be as easy as pie, but what it turns out to be is five hours of listening to horrible on hold music that hurts the ear after a while. You could be on hold for an hour, and it hangs up. You could be on hold for six hours and nobody picks up, or you actually do get someone to get on the line with you only to have to call back because that person was wrong and then you get to speak to a whole different person who has no idea about your situation or problems. Does it sound familiar? It is to me.

This system is horrible and not effective at all, and I have heard from many others that they agree, but has anything been done about it? I applied a week before the deadline; yes, I know its cutting it close but I like to throughly look through health plans. I go online to apply, only to have the system crash after being approved for financial assistance. I call the number they gave me, and they are closed. I call the next day, and the gentlemen gave me steps to follow. I try them later on only to see that my screen doesn’t show what they have. I call the next day only to be told someone would be calling me to figure out the problem sometime soon. I wait and wait, and suddenly it’s the last day of open enrollment. I get on the phone and speak to a lady and she transfers me to a specialist, who then sends me to a different specialist who then tells me all they had to do was push my pending application so that I could call a different company the following day. Do you see how ridiculous this system is? One simple problem took 12 hours, 46 minutes and 24 seconds to fix.

Kaitlyn Ravlin

Albert Lea