As my otherwise awesome parents are pretty conservative about, well, everything, I don’t want them to know what type of birth control I’m using or when I get tested for STIs and HIV (twice a year, if you’re interested). When I was in college I paid for these things out-of-pocket or put them off until free services were offered at my university because I didn’t want my parents getting a play by play when they saw our health insurance information. Clearly it wasn’t an ideal situation.But a few months ago I learned how to tear myself away from the tyranny of EOBs (Explanation of Benefits), and get some privacy. Here’s how I did it. EOBs are the documents your insurance company sends out that show the basic information about anything your plan helped cover during that statement period, from prescription costs to hospital payments. For those without a health policy background, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) is designed to protect an individual’s health privacy, but HIPAA rules allow EOBs to go to the “primary enrollee” of an insurance plan (a.k.a. parents, in my case) for billing purposes—as long as only necessary information is included. Different insurance companies have different interpretations of exactly what information is necessary, so EOBs vary in detail from one company to the next. Having any charges or visits related to my sexual health visible to my parents wasn’t something I was comfortable with, so I took action. I called up my insurance company one afternoon and asked them to send my EOBs directly to me. The representative handling my call was incredibly helpful (tip of the hat to Humana!) and immediately changed my contact information and stipulated on the account that only I would be able to see my information, unless I chose to release it to my parents. Now I can take full advantage of the benefits of health insurance (like no copays for birth control under the Affordable Care Act) and make healthcare decisions that are best for me without worrying about my privacy. Not every insurance company will allow information to be withheld from the person purchasing the plan.* In fact, laws can vary state-by-state, so some states might be more protective of your information than others. That could be why my friends from a handful of states across the country had very different experiences from mine when they called their insurance companies. One of them had a particularly awful phone call with a representative who had no idea what the company’s rules were about EOBs or whether she could even change the address for an individual on the plan. Another friend’s company said that because she still lived with her parents, they couldn’t send her EOBs to any other address. Still, considering that Mirena can cost over $500 upfront and the birth control pill can cost over $300 in a year, it’s worth calling up your insurance company to try to change your “privacy settings.”
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January 2020
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