Health in the U.S. is complicated. And stressful. I knew before I moved here that health benefits are insanely important. So I was extremely anxious to get signed up for them.
Well, things did not go well on that front. My company sent me forms, via email, right after I left Vancouver. I was not able to check email for about three weeks, and then they got piled under by a massive volume of other emails, mostly junk. Those forms should have been filled out before I even started. Although parts were impossible to sign up quickly because they required a U.S. bank account.
When I started my job, I was told I would get a health benefits sign up email within a week. Two weeks later, I still did not have it. I was also not paid either. So I started talking to people to see what was going on. That is when I discovered the old forms that needed filling out. It was also hard to talk to HR, because they are on the complete other side of the world, so time zone issues start to read their ugly head.
That done, I found that there are several tentacles to my company, and one part didn’t know about the other part. So my forms didn’t get entered in. And then when they were found, the financial system was locked for several days. They finally got entered in on Friday. My deadline for getting signed up for health benefits is Wednesday. After talking to HR, I will not get access to the health benefits signup until Wednesday morning.
So, now I had to get my manager involved to hurry things up. She succeeded in getting things going and I’m finally signed up.
My wife is very angry over the whole affair. I do not blame her.