For many, health policy jargon is clear as mud

[snopes]

Insurance industry critics say some insurers intentionally make their policies and procedures confusing, and some policy experts believe Congress should require standardized plan information as part of any overhaul of the health system.

http://www.latimes.com/features/heal...,6802102.story

[JoeBentley]

Originally Posted by snopes

Insurance industry critics say some insurers intentionally make their policies and procedures confusing

I'll admit this is one of my fears concerning health care reform.

In his book The Dilbert Future cartoonist Scott Adams describes what he calls a "Confusopoly." In a Confusopoly two or more business achieve a point where their products and services are so similar and similarly prices as to be identical to the average consumer, so in order to differentiate one business from another they have to confuse people. He uses the example of the phone companies and calling plans. After a certain point you can't make phone service any better to any reasonable degree and you can't make it any cheaper, so for phone services to compete they had introduce calling plans that were confusing enough so that consumers would pick one or the other without realizing there was no real difference between them.

[Steve]

Originally Posted by JoeBentley

I'll admit this is one of my fears concerning health care reform.

In his book The Dilbert Future cartoonist Scott Adams describes what he calls a "Confusopoly." In a Confusopoly two or more business achieve a point where their products and services are so similar and similarly prices as to be identical to the average consumer, so in order to differentiate one business from another they have to confuse people. He uses the example of the phone companies and calling plans. After a certain point you can't make phone service any better to any reasonable degree and you can't make it any cheaper, so for phone services to compete they had introduce calling plans that were confusing enough so that consumers would pick one or the other without realizing there was no real difference between them.

Is the danger of this greater with reform than under our current system though? The article indicates it might get easier:

Senate and House Democratic leaders are working on legislation that would establish health insurance exchanges allowing Americans to select from a menu of plans. The goal, Thorpe said, is "having more standardized product offerings and making it easier to compare across plans, apples to apples."

Whether members of Congress are the sort of people who make things clearer is, admittedly, open to debate. But the problems mentioned in the article are all under the current system, so I'm not sure why this sort of thing should make reform worrisome.