I own a small business, but I’m pretty much divorced from the business end of things. I pay someone to do payroll, pay bills, order stuff, hire/fire, and do light bookkeeping. One of her responsibilities is to keep my medical insurance up to date.
So, mid January I stop to pick up a prescription refill. I expect to pay my usual $8 copay. Instead, I’m asked for $285. I come to find my insurance ended December 31.
The next day I ask my business manager about this. She was hoping I wouldn’t find out I was insurance-less for January, as a new plan kicked in February first. She blamed Obama. I suggested that maybe she fucked up; again, she blamed Obama.
Her explanation was that my previous plan no longer exists, so it was cancelled. She claims notification was in with my monthly bill, and that she paid the bill without seeing the notification. I now have insurance again. Same plan as far as I can tell.
Assuming she’s telling the truth, I’d forgive her for not noticing the cancellation notice. I wouldn’t quickly forgive her for keeping it secret and hoping you wouldn’t find out. “Hey boss, I missed this cancellation notice, don’t go to the doctor in January unless you really need to.” Seems simple enough. Instead she hung you out in order to cover her own ass.
The business manager. She paid the bill “without seeing the notification”? WTF are you paying her for? You could get that level of “service” from setting up bill auto-pay with the bank, and for a lot less money.
Ideally, you shouldn’t have had a gap in coverage. Less ideally, but still satisfactory, would be “boss, you’re going to have a one-month gap in coverage. I’m sorry. But you’ll be covered again as of Feb 1”.
Failing to notify of a change in coverage and that you would be “bare” in January is not good job performance.
Even if Obama is to blame for…something…It’s still her fault that she missed whatever and failed to tell you about it.
Could Obama be to blame for your plan being obliterated? Maybe. But insurance companies have been cancelling and changing plans (and raising rates!!!) since insurance companies have been invented, so there’s no telling whether it was their doing or completely unavoidable due to ACA.
It can happen if she was going through a lot of bills quickly. Its forgivable assuming she owned up to it. But…
…which is irresponsible and a total dick-move. What if it was a license that you couldn’t re-apply for until 6 months from now? A certification where you’d have to re-take 18 credits before being eligible to be certified again?
What if missing the deadline screwed up a bid or lost you a client? What if you’d had a heart attack & had been hospitalized (The cost of that would well be more than what you pay her in a year).
She accidentally left you exposed, but she intentionally kept you blind to the exposure. She tried to fix the problem, true, but behind your back? How can you trust her with your money going forward?
Also, hiding behind Obama? She said that to you with a straight face? Did you give her a week off w/o pay for that alone?
“When come back, bring Honesty. Or bags for the stuff in your desk.”
Some people might call the employee’s actions ‘negligent’ and dishonest, but you’re more diplomatic than I am.
I’d say Obama’s to blame for your old policy being discontinued, but your business manager is definitely at fault for not noticing the notice, letting you know that your plan was being discontinued, and letting you make a decision about it at that point.
Typically they inform you multiple times well ahead of time. I’d guess they probably started around September, if your policy ended on 12/31. So you would have had time to figure something out.
The part where I’m really hazy is how you have insurance now. Did you go and sign up on a different plan? Was there some kind of provision where if your old plan ended on 12/31 and you hadn’t signed up for a new one by 1/31, you automatically got stuck in some low-end plan? What about COBRA?
No matter the reason for the cancellation of your old plan she is 100% responsible for not telling you that you needed insurance in January. You would have been notified multiple times that your insurance would not be renewing so she should have known it was being cancelled. More than that she should have come to speak to you immediately to show you your new insurance options and let you pick a plan the second she knew you needed another one. If she just picked one at random then you have no idea about your copays, deductibles, coverages, etc. More than that, one if she picked one from a different network and now you have to switch doctors or aren’t covered for the same prescriptions or something? This is unacceptable and for me this would be a firing offense.
Oh well. She knows I was/am pissed. She has worked for me for 15ish years, and while she sometimes fucks up she is usually honest about it. She once cost me a $200 dollar tax penalty and she told me about it after she paid it out of her own pocket.
If I fire her I’d have to do her job until I hired a replacement. I wouldn’t wanna do that. I currently work 5 hours a day and doing an eight hour day would suck.
My heart attack/hospitalization/stent was right around one year ago. Dumb luck.
If you had a heart attack two weeks ago, you would be $50,000 out of pocket. Same for your employees. That this did not happen doesn’t make it a little deal. This was MAJOR.
Yeah. I’m not saying that you should fire her (or that you shouldn’t), but this is a HUGE deal, and falls squarely on her shoulders. You need to let her know this, and disabuse her from the notion that it’s anyone’s fault but hers. If she can’t acknowledge her major errors and decides to foist responsibility onto the Black Devil, then I don’t know that I would trust her with the responsibilities that she has.
