What health information does my employer have about me?

Confidentiality around employer-sponsored insurance gets really weird. 

I think we can all agree that privacy is a good thing. 

It's best your boss doesn't know about that group text with you and your work-besties. No one wants work to know about your prescription to treat that STI. What happens in your camera roll is nobody's business.

Did you know that if your company has more than 50 employees (100 in CA, CO, NY, and VT), the employer sees all the prescriptions people take? 

They don’t know who, but if there are fewer than 100 people it’s pretty easy to guess who needed a prescription to control their excessive underarm sweating. Or who's on Lithium.

Employers can also see the total spend broken down by employee. 

Again, it’s anonymized. But if the insurance company paid $2M in expenses for one member, or someone had a long stay in a rehab center, you can probably guess who it was. 

To be clear, I’ve facilitated a lot of renewals and I’ve never seen an employer treat this information with anything but respect and discretion. 

But it feels a bit icky to know that your CFO and Director of HR probably know about that prescription hemorrhoid treatment that you... erm... that “someone” got back in March.

But there are times when privacy gets in the way. Or is just plain silly. 

Sometimes privacy creates a barrier that no one wants. 

For example, did you know that the insurance company can’t share disability payout amounts with the employer?

Cool, cool, cool. 

But what if your company wants to top up your payments to your full salary? 

They can’t process the payment until they know how much you’re getting from insurance.

Insurance takes time. They need to review the claim, approve benefits, and send out a check.

A check. Through snail mail.

And the company doesn’t know how much they’re going to pay you until the insurance company approves the claim.

Except those letters are so confusing, it's hard to know for sure what they'll pay until the checks come. 

So everyone has to wait for the check to arrive and then ask YOU how much it was for. 

Because: privacy. 

Why can’t you just sign a release as part of your application that lets the insurance company disclose your payment amounts to your employer?

You can’t. Because: insurance.

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👋 I'm Claire. At least once a quarter, I call an insurance company and demand, "Explain yourself!"