Hey there, Paul and Kristen live in Kansas City with their two kids.

Kristen and their daughter, the older kid, they have some complex medical issues.

Need to see some specialized folks.

And some of those folks don't take Kristen and Paul's insurance.

They're out of network.

So Kristen and Paul pay out of pocket a lot,

maybe $20,000 a year.

But their health insurance plan does reimburse

some out-of-network care.

So in January 2023, Kristen called a help line connected with the insurance plan to find out how that was going to work.

They basically said, sure, easy, easy, easy, easy, you pay and then you get online and you click this form, you show what you paid,

and then we send you a check and reimburse you.

Kristen was on it. She built a whole spreadsheet to track every bill she paid, every reimbursement form she had submitted, and she waited for the checks.

The insurance company gave itself months just to process the claims and when they finally sent statements

The statements seem weird they were like here's what you paid and here's your discounts and here's what you may owe.

And Kristen was like, what?

Because I was thinking, well I don't owe anything we paid out of pocket but then I was

thinking well this must be the portion that they're paying us back but then the

math didn't add up. Yeah, not at all.

Kristen was expecting to get 50% back,

like her plan said she would.

But this amount wasn't anything like 50%. And what's this discount business? It took months and a lot

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