Anyone in the HR or benefits field knows how health coverage works. But what about the rest of your employees or new HR staffers? Here’s a good Web site to get them up to speed.
Site name: All About Benefits.
URL: www.allaboutthebenefits.com/
Who runs it: Aetna
What it provides: The site bills itself as a resource for people who are just out of school and trying to make healthcare-coverage decisions in the decidedly less-than-user-friendly world of health coverage. However, it can be a helpful to just about anyone who doesn’t know a lot about health coverage – the terms, the options, the pitfalls.
The home page has five major tabs – “Let the job hunt begin,” “Budgeting for your health,” “Work it! How to enroll,” “Raise your health benefits IQ” and “School’s out forever, now what?”
All are helpful in one way or another, but “Budgeting for your health” and “Raise your health benefits IQ” seem to have the most pertinent info.
Budgeting for your health provides more than just how much coverage costs and how to pay for it. The page provides a dozen key questions that everyone should ask when getting health coverage. It’s not that the reader will be happy with every answer, but at least there will be fewer surprises when using coverage.
For instance, the section suggests that you ask about the ease (or difficulty) of getting out-of-network treatment – and in fact explains in simple terms what a “network” is.
Raise your health benefits IQ describes so-called “well” benefits, wellness, and HSAs and FSAs, among other topics. It also has a page that lists 10 common costly mistakes that people make when signing up for or using health coverage.
Note: As mentioned, the site is a product of Aetna Corp., which of course offers health coverage. To its credit, though, the company doesn’t inundate you with appeals to sign up with Aetna, nor does it trumpet Aetna as the best choice for coverage. Yes, there are Aetna ads slapped up here and there, but they’re no more obtrusive or annoying than most Web ads (such as the ones on this site).
