Katie works with insurance on a daily basis, so she understands better than most just how bad this process can be. I don't and never want to. But I did make it a point to try to help her out so I can learn it just for redundancy's sake. 

So we logged in, which was a headache in and of itself. It kept declining my login on desktop, but the same creds worked on the phone. So we logged into a secondary service and, luckily, they had single sign-on (SSO) in place so we were then able to get in via that backdoor. 

Then we discovered that there are now about 12 plans available as opposed to the 4-6 that there were last year. We knew it was changing, we just had no idea how much. 

Next up were the contradictions in explanations and it was really kind ugly. The site said one thing, paperwork seemed to say something else or just obfuscated it enough that it sound contradictory. 

Finally, there's the cost. What we changed over to only winds up coming in at about $2.24 more per pay period than what we had. And, while we're happier about the coverage we (think we) are going to be receiving, it's kinda mindblowing to look at the amount and multiply it out by 26 to find out how much we pay per year.

Jeebus. It's a lot of money. If insurance didn't cost so much, we'd be pretty well off. I think everyone would be pretty well off. It's kinda disgusting how much it all costs and, for all we spend on it, how difficult it is to make use of or sign up for or anything else regarding it. With all the money we give them, they should be able to make this the easiest thing under the sun to sign up for and use and obtain reimbursement for its use.

Ugh.