#020 – Your money is being taken from you and you don't even know it.  Your health insurance premiums are higher, in part, because you sign away your health insurance benefits to third parties who act in their best interest, not necessarily yours.

Assignment of Benefits (AOBs) is essentially demanded by hospitals, doctors and pharmacies before they will serve you.  You probably don't even know it, either.  You are presented a bunch of documents, don't read them, sign bottom of the page and then they proceed.  What you signed basically gives the provider direct access to the money that the insurance company is contractually obligated to pay to you.  Your money is being taken from you.

Once you sign your benefits away, you lose control.  Providers enlist their attorneys to author AOBs with the intent to seize control over your benefits so that they make sure that they get paid at whatever amount they deem appropriate.  The AOB is specifically written so that you cannot reverse the decision you make – it is irrevocable, irreversible.   Name any other thing that you purchase where you actually allow someone to push you aside while they decide what happens with your money?

State lawmakers and regulators will probably start to scrutinize these arrangements.  The State of Florida passed a law to regulate Assignment of Benefits related to property insurance.  As the Center For Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) starts to scrutinize transparency, AOBs will likely be considered, as well.

Check out my pal Whitney Johnson here:

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Next episode….we'll look at networks, break them down so you can understand how/why they  were put together and why they cost you more in your insurance premiums and how they may become obsolete.

When football was football and not a passing league!  Nobody finds daylight like #20!

Barry Sanders