This is a classic case of attributing the results of stupidity to malice. Insurance companies are heavily regulated and subject to massive fines and public embarrassment for things like deliberately preventing the insured from filing claims. And this sort of petty detail in the UI, being directed from C-level executive management? It doesn't pass the smell test. They're managers, not supervillains.
No, this is just garden-variety incompetence. This is the result of incredibly complex specs being implemented by teams of dozens or hundreds, including offshore work and highly distributed teams. The kind of evil plots suggested here would be passing through not just executives, but architects, product owners, scrum masters, lead engineers, and the delightfully unpredictable hands of the cheapest programmers money can buy. Dozens of opportunities for sabotage of something so overtly evil.
I've worked in insurance IT quite a bit. They're just not smart enough to do this.
Given that insurance claims can determine if someone lives or dies I'm not very interested in parsing what the intent was in the, as you rightly say, byzantine halls of large insurers. What matters are outcomes, and these outcomes are nowhere near aligned with the patients best interests.
The sad reality is that the state must hold them to account because a few blog posts here and there is going to do nothing in the face of billions of dollars.
Edit: before anyone else bothers, I am fully aware that pointlessly complex state processes, greed, and corruption are part of why the regulations are so complicated. But, making them "simpler" doesn't change the profit motive: the only way to truly solve this problem is to provide a public option because currently patient outcomes aren't aligned with profit interests.
Most large insurers barely provide any insurance any more. Most of their customers are self insured employers. The "insurance" company just administers claims without bearing much risk. Approving a claim doesn't directly impact their profits. So their interests are better aligned with patients than you think.
This article isn't great, it provides weak evidence for the first point and speculates on the final two points based on personal experience.
The fact that this article is garbage doesn't mean it's wrong, though. I'm very close to someone who works on healthcare UI/ux and it's true that they aren't allowed to encourage use of their healthcare (ie going to a doctor). Whether or not this goes farther to out right denying claims, I can't say, as it likely depends on the provider (UA is likely to be awful whereas non-profit orgs are probably less so). But at the very least, they put a lot of thought into minimizing costs, which can hurt patients in life threatening ways. It's pretty easy to see the incentives are all fucked and will lead to this sort of thing.
>This is the result of incredibly complex specs being implemented by teams of dozens or hundreds, including offshore work and highly distributed teams. The kind of evil plots suggested here would be passing through not just executives, but architects, product owners, scrum masters, lead engineers, and the delightfully unpredictable hands of the cheapest programmers money can buy.
Not really. You can find the same sort of gruesome inefficiency and bad UX in systems built by similar organizations that are supposed encourage, rather than discourage activity. The deeper problem here is a focus on internal business needs (and terminology) as the "customers", rather than end users. Heck, I've seen the same basic opaqueness and clumsy, jargon-laden UX on things as simple as credit card terminals.
The only time you see really good UX for these things is in the startup (or post-startup, ie Amazon or Google) world, where UX for end users becomes a top-level requirement, and driving clicks is measured and actively improved.
Nope. The vast majority of benefits are processed without incident or complexity, between the medical provider and the insurer, with no action required by the insured. Rigging some UI for hand-entry of claims in a way that suppresses only some, but not all? That's not going to make an appreciable difference in the bottom line.
I'm not sure what the "nope" is in response to: Insurance companies profit when people don't collect on their benefits. If I pay and don't use it, they win. This is why companies that self-insure take out further insurance on their pool in case someone does actually get very sick and it drains the pool, which does happen more often than you'd think.
Then again we have cases like the Volkswagen diesel scandal which managed to go past (I guess?) similar processes and make it into full car production.
Not similar at all. The regulatory burden on insurance companies is orders of magnitude more immense than that of auto makers. The complexity of insurance and the software products used in the industry make the auto industry seem like tinker toys.
It's not clear that the regulatory burden surrounding web page UI is all that steep. Peeking at CA's law (Title 10), for example, doesn't yield a whole lot. However, what does stand in OP's favor is that it must pass standards identified by the ADA and in secion 504 (Rehab act). This might be a way to fight back- unless under some adaptive technology everything magically appears haha.
No, this is just garden-variety incompetence. This is the result of incredibly complex specs being implemented by teams of dozens or hundreds, including offshore work and highly distributed teams. The kind of evil plots suggested here would be passing through not just executives, but architects, product owners, scrum masters, lead engineers, and the delightfully unpredictable hands of the cheapest programmers money can buy. Dozens of opportunities for sabotage of something so overtly evil.
I've worked in insurance IT quite a bit. They're just not smart enough to do this.