Lifelong Kaiser Permanente customer now forced to use Blue Shield per employer

Hi, I used to pay for full PPO insurance (one where you use FSA instead of HDHP and contribute to a HSA) for Kaiser as I didn't want to deal with the headache of my healthcare costs spiking too much as I had procedures, tests, and even a surgery and emergency visit in the past that didn't incur any cost other than admission fees.

Now I have a new job that only has Blue Cross as their healthcare provider, where I was offered a small amount of extra cash a month to keep my Kaiser insurance, but the difference would've been too much to justify to keep the latter. This is the first time I chose a HDHP plan to try and save money, only to find out my deductive is 5-figure for my family and we already had 2 emergency visits, an urgent care visit, several physical therapy visits, and we have yet to even cross the 50% threshold of our deductible before they start paying for any additional vists/procedures, even though my job started a few months ago, a full-year deductible amount is still applied (how's that fair?).

So for those who are long-time Kaiser customers that suddenly find themselves using Blue Cross, what should I do or learn about Blue Cross that makes life a little easier and perhaps save on costs?

submitted by /u/maniac_mac10
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