This Word Nerd loves learning about the meanings and origins of words, but not when she is trying to figure out health care coverage. There is a time and a place for lofty, interesting vocabulary, and it is not when one is trying to understand insurance benefits.
Daughter is hopefully starting college soon, and we are tackling paperwork, including a medical insurance waiver form, which sent us on a quest for deductible amounts and preauthorization fine print.
The insurance company website wasn’t terribly helpful, so I decided to call and speak to a person. Of course, I reached an automated answering service that called itself “The Aetna Concierge” and offered a list of menu of options including, “speak with a nurse case manager” and “speak with a health concierge.”
Daughter asked, “What the heck is a health concierge?”
Excellent question.
The word concierge comes from the French, probably an alteration of Latin conservus fellow slave, from com- + servus slave. According to Merriam-Webster, a concierge is:
- a resident in an apartment building especially in France who serves as doorkeeper, landlord’s representative, and janitor
- a usually multilingual hotel staff member who handles luggage and mail, makes reservations, and arranges tours
- a person employed (as by a business) to make arrangements or run errands
Aetna, are you telling me that your customer service reps are going to run errands for me and set up tours? 🙁 I didn’t think so. So please, use language that people can understand. Give the option to speak to a customer service representative and stop trying to be fancy.
Fortunately, when I, on a guess, chose “health concierge” from the automated menu, I was connected to a woman who was able to promptly answer all of our questions. She was very helpful. Her title was not. Health insurance is complicated enough without unnecessary pretentious words. These days, especially during the pandemic, we need clarity and transparency. This is one situation when I don’t want to see a Word Nerd Word.
Sidebar: As we completed the paperwork, daughter stated, “I’ve been looking forward to being an adult for so long, looking forward to the freedom, only to figure out that it involves a lot of annoying paperwork.” I told her to enjoy college before the “full onslaught of adult crap” starts after graduation. She greatly appreciated my sage advice. 😉
What pretentious, over complicated, or confusing words have you come across lately? I’d be happy to tackle them for you here.
Thanks for getting nerdy with me!
