Walkthrough of UHC’s Claim Reimbursement Form Game

History

I’ve always loved the puzzle genre of video games. Starting with the Infocomm text adventures of the early 80’s through Myst and similar adventure games in the 90’s to recent classics like Portal, The Talos Principle, and The Witness, I’ve spent thousands of hours of gameplay in this genre.

The United Healthcare Medical Reimbursement Form, though, is in a class by itself. Unlike those other games that transport you to a different world – often a fantastic world where writing words turns into a linking book you can literally jump into, or solving puzzles awakens you to an empty world ready to be repopulated with the brightest minds that survived an apocalypse – the United Healthcare Medical Reimbursement Form takes a more dystopian view. If you don’t fill out the form properly, you won’t be reimbursed for your medical expenses, you’ll go bankrupt, and whatever ailment you were trying to get reimbursed for will likely kill you or at least permanently disable you. If you do succeed, your life returns to normal. No super powers. No fantastical linking books. No rebuilding society. You just don’t immediately die.

And if that wasn’t enough, the gameplay is the same brutal style you may remember from those Ken and Roberta Williams point-and-click adventures where one wrong move early on can keep you from progressing at a later stage. It can be devastating and very time consuming!

Starting Out

So let’s get to it. You recently went to a doctor who refuses to accept insurance because they can’t afford the staff necessary to jump through the hoops you’re about to jump through. What makes this game so realistic is that you have to supply your own form from an actual doctor that you see!

You start by logging into myuhc.com using your HealthSafe™ account at https://myuhc.com/ with your preferred browser on any computer or smart phone. (A HealthSafe™ ID is similar to an Xbox GamePass, or similar ID on other gaming systems.) I was playing on macOS, so I chose Safari. (Note: We will return to this important point later!) When you do, you’ll be greeted with a series of progress bars that don’t seem to be doing anything specific. One fills up, then another one starts immediately. You can see hundreds of addresses flash by in an instant in your browser’s URL bar. I think this was a shout out to the long loading time of games past played on Commodore 64s, Apple IIs, and Atari 400/800s. But pay no mind, once the page finally loads, it will be full of information you don’t understand. Your first job is to figure out where to click to submit a claim. Fail that test and it’s game over for you.

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There is a button labeled “Claims and Accounts,” but of course, it’s not that easy. (If you’re on mobile, you’ll need to access “Claims and Accounts” from the “hamburger” menu.) When you click it, it not only opens a horizontal menu below your choice, but also loads a new page with lots more confusing information on it! Next, you have to click “Submit a Claim.” Once you click on that, there are 4 additional options and you need to choose the right one or you’ll end up on the wrong form submitting incorrect information. (What happens if you submit the wrong info? I didn’t have the guts to find out!) In my case, this was a normal medical visit my spouse had with a neurologist, so I chose “Medical Claims.” Note that if you saw a mental health professional, that’s not technically a “medical” visit according to United Healthcare lore. You need to choose the option specifically for mental health in that case. I don’t recall why they separate them out, but I’m sure some astute reader can point out the event in the mythology of their universe that caused this schism we don’t have in the real world.

Submitting a Claim

Choosing the above option was confusing enough on its own, but what happens next makes basically no sense. Remember earlier when I said I was using Safari? Well, it turns out that each browser has a different response to choosing a claim form. I’ll discuss what happens in other browsers in a later section. When I clicked on “Medical Claims,” Safari opened a new tab, but showed no page. The address looked like the same address as the page I came from and it was selected. (I switched back and forth between the tabs to see if I was missing some clue that would explain why the page wasn’t loading.) After about 10 seconds of doing nothing and giving no feedback, it suddenly loaded. And sure enough, it loaded the page I had just come from. That’s odd, I thought. I know I clicked on “Medical Claims”. I was about to click on it again when it suddenly sprung into action and loaded the medical claims page! I had done it correctly! I just hadn’t waited long enough. I’m sure there was some sort of riddle or clue on the preceding page that would make this make sense, but I did not get it. Luckily, I figured it out by coincidence.

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At this point you’re presented with instructions for what to do next. If the claim is related to COVID-19, you’ve got the wrong form and you need to go back to the previous page. (And here’s where it’s dastardly! You’ll notice the back button doesn’t work. Remember this opened the page in a new tab. Those game designers sure do make things tough!) In any event, this is the right form for my case, so I clicked on the “Start New Claim” button.

Security

Next I’m presented with a form asking for my email address so they can send me a secure code to submit my claim. It may seem odd to do this. First, they have my email address, so entering one just seems like it reduces security. If someone got into my account, they could use their own email address and I wouldn’t even know they had submitted a claim from my insurance account. Second, do people regularly break into other people’s accounts, submit bogus claims forms with that person’s contact info on them, and let that person get reimbursed for it? That seems like an odd thing to do. But then, I’m not a game designer. Maybe there’s a scenario there I’m not understanding?

Anyway, once I get the code sent to my insecure email that anyone at my ISP can read, I’m presented with another form to enter my insurance member ID, group ID and date of birth. But wait. Aren’t I on the insurance company’s web site? Aren’t I logged in? Shouldn’t it already have that information to fill out the form for me? (Or better yet, not even show me the form!) It should! But I guess if they solve all the puzzles for you, it would take away the fun. It wouldn’t be much of a puzzle, would it? (If your browser accepts cookies, it will be filled out the next time you return, so I guess that’s good. I wonder if that means it’s stored in plaintext somewhere on my computer and I can edit it to send claims about other people? Probably not. I didn’t have time to find out.)

Who, What, Where, When and Why?

Next you’re prompted for whether this claim is for you or a dependent. I select dependent since it’s about my spouse. Now you probably thought that you had already chosen the type of claim back on the “Medical Claims” page. But they now ask you again about what type it is and even have entries for “Prescription Claim” (which if you recall was a different form on the previous page) and “COVID-19” (also a different form) as well as “Wig”. (I may chose that one next time! I’ve always wondered how I would look with a different hair style that I’m too afraid to actually try, knowing that it will take weeks or months to grow back if I don’t like it.) The choice you want is “Medical Claim (All other reimbursement types)”.

It was very clever of them to make the most common answer be right in the middle of the list surrounded by options that aren’t valid options! That should cut down on brute force solving of the puzzle.

Next they ask if the service occurred in a different country. After answering “No”, they want to know where the services were rendered. In my spouse’s case, it was via telehealth. One wonders why it makes a difference? If I received the same service over the phone or in the office, shouldn’t I be reimbursed the same amount?

Because this was for my spouse’s visit, I had to enter her information. Were this a real form in the real world and not a dystopian adventure, they would have had a drop-down with all my dependents listed so I could just pick one. (After all, they know all of them already since I have insurance for them.) But I let my willing suspension of disbelief remain intact despite the obvious plot hole. After entering her name, they helpfully CAPITALIZE it for me. For her date of birth, I enter just the digits without slashes, and it fills in the slashes for me! This is so realistic!

Once filled out and submitted, they ask 2 additional questions: 1) is this claim for an automobile or work accident, and 2) do you have other insurance? These are basically side quests, and I wanted to get to the meat of the game. I selected “no” for both. This is where the developers are playing the long game, though. They actually call me every 6 months and ask whether I have another insurance provider. If my answers don’t match, I imagine the game changes substantially! But as I said, I wanted to get right down to it!

The Superbill

Remember at the start of this I mentioned that you need to have a real bill from a real doctor? This is where it comes in. This is sometimes called a “superbill". I’m not sure where the name comes from. Maybe because it’s super confusing? Super scary (since it controls whether you get your money back or not)? Or super unlikely to be accepted? I don’t know, but i