Not defending this, but what you are doing is entering claims information exactly how a hospital / clinician would have to. A lot of this is done automatically by software now. This isn't a dark-pattern, it's just slapping a shitty user interface on top of a standard claims billing process. It's sort of like using POSTMAN to interact with an API.
Walkthrough of UHC’s claim reimbursement form game
21–30 of 53 posts
Re: Walkthrough of UHC’s claim reimbursement form game
#22It's appropriate to pick on UHC here but a lot of this insanity derives from rulemaking by Health & Human Services and Center for Medicare/Medicaid Services with a healthy dose of legacy everything thrown in. Even if you really wanted to fix this in an overall way you cannot without acts of congress, rulemaking by federal departments and individual legislation in each of the states and local medical jurisdictions. UHC has no inventive to make it easy to submit a claim but likewise they realize the futility of expending a lot of resources to make it the tiny bit better that current regulation would permit.
I am author of Hacking Healthcare for O'Reilly, 20+ years experience building and managing health systems
Re: Walkthrough of UHC’s claim reimbursement form game
#23I have an insurance where you have to submit your reimbursement forms via mail. For some reason this has been quite challenging to me (printer, stamp, envelope etc.) and I didn’t submit things. A provider pointed me to reimbursify which made it way simpler as you pay per claim and it just mails the reimbursement to the insurance. I think this reimbursify may be also helpful in cases like this if you want to speed run…
Sometimes it's actually easier to do this kind of stuff by mail. It's archaic, but most of the inefficiency falls on the other end. Same goes for dealing with banks, IRS, anyone who doesn't have a choice to deal with you (or you with them).
Send them a letter and make them figure out what to do about it. No need to wait on the phone and be transferred around or search through hundreds of menus in a poorly designed app.
Re: Walkthrough of UHC’s claim reimbursement form game
#24[deleted]
Re: Walkthrough of UHC’s claim reimbursement form game
#25So in Canada, you go to the doctor. You give them your health card. Then you leave. That's all. The doctor uses the standard provincial billing system to get their money. This seems far more exciting though!
This misses the part of the game where the doctor's office has you fill out forms giving them a bunch of the same info they already have. Twice. In the same visit. This may take 20 or more minutes. For no good reason whatsoever. Then the ongoing ARG portion where you have to repeatedly sit on hold for hours with the provider's billing department, insurance, and the state insurance commission and/or your congressperso…
>"Oh and I bet the Canadian version of the game doesn't even have some of the greatest antagonists of the American edition: the people whose entire job is to wander around emergency rooms bugging very sick people about payment and insurance."
Most, if not all the provinces do actually charge people in certain groups (tourists & recent immigrants) for medical care.
Re: Walkthrough of UHC’s claim reimbursement form game
#26It's appropriate to pick on UHC here but a lot of this insanity derives from rulemaking by Health & Human Services and Center for Medicare/Medicaid Services with a healthy dose of legacy everything thrown in. Even if you really wanted to fix this in an overall way you cannot without acts of congress, rulemaking by federal departments and individual legislation in each of the states and local medical jurisdictions. UH…
Thanks for writing Hacking Healthcare! It's been an incredibly helpful resource working in healthtech.
Re: Walkthrough of UHC’s claim reimbursement form game
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
>and noticed that one of the domains in the redirect party as soon as you login is Adobe .... It doesn't look like it. I slowy scrubbed through the ChoosingForm.mov video, adobe isn't in any of the domains. It's only present as a query parameter.
https://imgur.com/a/9E4mrrU Just cleared the inspector panel after loading login page, and entering my login information, hit submit, and waited for things to settle after the home page load. Adobe, Facebook, Google, etc. All told that I just logged into Health Insurance account. Or Given more details. shrugs .
I saw this too. How is this not a HIPPA violation?
Re: Walkthrough of UHC’s claim reimbursement form game
#28This is great. I submitted my first claim form a couple of weeks ago and was dumbfounded by how difficult it was! Great job.
Re: Walkthrough of UHC’s claim reimbursement form game
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
>and noticed that one of the domains in the redirect party as soon as you login is Adobe .... It doesn't look like it. I slowy scrubbed through the ChoosingForm.mov video, adobe isn't in any of the domains. It's only present as a query parameter.
https://imgur.com/a/9E4mrrU Just cleared the inspector panel after loading login page, and entering my login information, hit submit, and waited for things to settle after the home page load. Adobe, Facebook, Google, etc. All told that I just logged into Health Insurance account. Or Given more details. shrugs .
My guess would be that they're using Adobe Fonts, which is a pretty popular service for web fonts.
Re: Walkthrough of UHC’s claim reimbursement form game
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
https://imgur.com/a/9E4mrrU Just cleared the inspector panel after loading login page, and entering my login information, hit submit, and waited for things to settle after the home page load. Adobe, Facebook, Google, etc. All told that I just logged into Health Insurance account. Or Given more details. shrugs .
I saw this too. How is this not a HIPPA violation?
The fact that you have health insurance with UHC isn't PHI, which basically boils down to "your chart plus specific billing information". It's more complex than that, but that will steer your intuition in the right direction.