What's So Open About Open Enrollment?

Some people are grappling with difficult voting decisions this week, but millions more are baffled, ticked-off and downright angry over an Orwellian thing called "Open Enrollment." Our editorial meetings were brimming with thoughts about this annual phenomenon. Below is a summary:

• What's so "Open" about a system in which most of the important decisions have already been made for you by two or more extremely large organizations, who are focused on cost-cutting and profitability with only a minor interest in your health? 
• Do former auto company execs and bank regulators migrate to healthcare companies after they "retire" early? Just at a critical moment in the national healthcare brawl, when you'd think that healthcare companies would want citizens/customers to think favorably about them, they demonstrate their stupidity, minor-league greed and inability to communicate clearly in any language. After reading the documents 10 times, you understand they're cutting bennies and charging you more. Can you spell "Public Option?"
• Why do we have to do this every year? There are many things in life that we do not have to become fearful about losing every year "unless you respond in writing by...." For example, we have been trying to cancel our Travel & Leisure subscription for several years. Nobody in the family even remembers ordering it. Yet, it keeps on coming. Why can't our healthcare be like that without this annual "Enrollment?" Why can't your company and your insurer write you an email that says, " We are cutting benefits this way, and we are charging you more this way." Period. Same thing every year. Have you ever heard from these Bobbsy Twins that, "we are giving you more and better coverage and reducing the annual cost to you and your wonderful family by 25%?" Hello!
• Sometime before next year's Congressional elections, Congress and the Administration will present you with the new Health Plan. It boils down to this: if you didn't have any insurance before, or couldn't afford it, you are going to get it. If you had insurance and couldn't afford it, you will pay the same for less. If you had insurance, could afford it and liked it, you may be sent to a low security prison and you definitely will pay much more for a lot less. That's it. Dems are betting that more people will like it than hate it and that they will vote next November. Republicans think  an invisible surgeon's hand will intervene. But, the worst part is that we will probably still have "Open Enrollment."
• Nothing is more closed than Open Enrollment.
• Your current of former employer, sensing a golden opportunity, desperately wants to have a Public Option, so they won't have to provide "benefits" any more. None. Zero. Zilch. CFO's all over the country are smiling because a company that a) never hires anybody anymore b) pays huge bonuses to CFO's and others, and c) no longer has to waste money on benefits that could be going to bonuses is a great company. Right?
• We though AIG was pretty bad. Some of us think owning GM/Citi/Etc is no picnic. We get upset at GoldiLocks and their bonuses. But these CFO's, CEO's and their healthcare partners make those three auto company dingles look like geniuses. And that's not good.
• When President O, Congressman "Wild Thing" Max, Mother Nancy and others look back on the whole sordid Healthcare Thing, they will point to the 2009 Open Enrollment period as THE turning point at which citizens, employees and healthcare co. customers decided that NOTHING could be as stupid, ineffectual and downright insulting as this Annual Customer & Patient Gouging they call Open Enrollment.
• And these were the more reasonable thoughts. We can't print the others.

As an antidote to Open Enrollment, I suggest, actually request, that you listen to Duke Ellington:The Private Collection, Vol. 6, California Dates 1958. Everything will seem a little bit more manageable after listening to Duke and his band live, 50 years ago, but perhaps even more alive today.