Until you use the benefits you typically don’t learn how they work, so there’s a lot of things you don’t find out until after the fact, and there’s a lot of hard feelings about that ... .
There’s a report, done by the Institute of Medicine a number of years ago, which found I think about half the adult population considered ‘health illiterate’ ... because of the way in which health care documentation is presented ... above people’s heads ... .
You need to understand your benefits. At least start with the basics, and I think that it’s important to sit down with your family to understand this, and to make sure that you do have a good grasp of how your benefits work before you get sick, because that’s not the time to be trying to figure this out.
Paul Fronstin
Employee Benefit Research Institute
Director, Health Research and Education Program
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