Solution: Big Scary Health Insurance Pitfall

There were two bright lights during my year of forced labor with CNET after they bought Chowhound. One was Max Mead (written about here), a brilliant business wiz who brought our site to his company's attention, and a human resources health insurance specialist who prefers anonymity and who had a gift for explaining complexity...plus a level of human kindness unusual in big corporations. Both these qualities would seem to be obviously necessary for an HR employee. Ha. Haha. Hahahahahaha.

This person has - no surprise - a smart comment to offer on my "Big Scary Health Insurance Pitfall", which apparently is no pitfall at all...if you take the proper steps. Great news!

I’m commenting on your article about in-network hospital care and unknowingly receiving treatment from an out-of-network provider.

New York has a law on that.

Insured are protected if this situation happens; the insurance company pays as if the provider was in-network and the out-of-network provider has to accept the payment.

I haven’t seen it work in practice, but in the link there are instructions on what to do. It might be helpful to discuss with your insurance company.

Other states have enacted similar laws, although New York posts the information more clearly than other states.

Note that this all started out with my posting about Psyching Out Health Insurance.