Things Learned So Far - Insurance

In looking back, there's been a few things I'm glad I did, and some things I wish I did differently relating to insurance and health savings accounts.  I thought I would share a few things I've learned from this whole experience related to the various insurance policies, payments, and dealing with the health and insurance companies.  Overall, in looking back, I feel so blessed that Microsoft is generous enough to offer very good benefits and coverage.

Life Insurance: According to Wikipedia, life insurance is a sum of money paid to beneficiaries upon death of the insured person.  When I signed up for this benefit when I joined Microsoft, I only opted for $X amount because that was the max allowed without having a doctors note.  I wish I had done the max allowed (twice what I signed up for).  If you don't have life insurance, I would strongly suggest signing up and getting as much as you can, because I believe the price difference is only a few dollars a month.  If your employer doesn't offer this, I believe you can get it through an individual policy.  If you have been diagnosed with various diseases or disorders, they are more likely to reject you from receiving a policy, or increasing the cost of the insurance.

Disability Insurance: Wikipedia defines disability insurance as insurance against the beneficiary's earned income against the risk that a disability creates a barrier for a worker to complete the core functions of their work. Luckily Microsoft pays for this benefit, but I believe some employers don't offer this by default.  If you're not sure, I would suggest looking into it and getting a reasonable percentage of income covered, again at a relatively low cost per month.  Also, understand the difference in coverage and potential gaps between short-term and long-term disability insurance.

Medical Insurance Payments: Be sure to understand the deductibles, co-insurance payments, and annual out-of-pocket maximums associated with your medical insurance. Here's some information on this.  Also, it's interesting to know if you have lifetime maximums on the policy to understand if there's a point where they can just stop paying because you've spent too much of their money.  The payments mentioned above may change depending on in-network and out-of-network providers.  It's good to know the basics of your policy, which I'm glad I did before this whole thing started.

Spending Accounts: If you have access to spending accounts (health, flexible, or both), it may be wise to look into depositing regularly if you aren't already.  Also note there is a difference between a health savings account (HSA) and a flexible spending account (FSA); I believe the FSA doesn't carry over year over year, and the HSA does.  I believe both are pre-tax contributions, so it reduces your tax liability.  Luckily I was contributing to my HSA, but I wish I had done more.

Dealing Medical Professionals and Insurance companies: I recently found out that many of the high-cost procedures require pre-authorization from the insurance company before the procedure can take place.  What happened to me was that the doctors office didn't submit the request to the insurance company, which is the bottleneck in the process.  What I've found to be effective is to pick up the phone and call the insurance company to follow-up to make sure they have the request from the doctor and they understand the urgency of your request.  These processes can be slowed down because someone forgot to submit something, so it's good to follow-up to make sure everyone has what they need to move forward.  Understand where the bottleneck is, and do what's within your power to influence it, and be your best advocate, especially in life-altering situations.  I would be weeks behind where I am had I not pushed the insurance companies and medical professionals for forgotten requests and documentation required by each.