Pros
Plenty of hours available to work. The pay, at the time I worked (for RSA, Conduent's predecessor), was high for a call-center job. Depending on the group and CEM to whom you were assigned, you might end up with an excellent advocate when the invariable awful audits even the BEST MCMs receive were provided. If you had a non supportive CEM, it was terribly anxiety-producing. A good CEM was able to place a "bad" call in context and reframe the experience. (I was lucky to have one of these for most of my tenure at RSA. Because of this, I also was given a tiny bit of latitude when attendance was impacted by a serious family medical crisis---my husband had quintuple bypass, necessitating time off from work. I was not able to take NEARLY what any other employer would have permitted, FMLA-eligible or not. (I've worked for lots of places in my 55 years, flexible and not-so-flexible; RSA is hands-down the LEAST flexible.) Because I had a CEM who was able to think beyond what written rules say, I was at least not made to feel terrible (as many were; employees crying in the bathroom, break room, lobby, and hallway were a common sight) for circumstances beyond my control. I did like the contact with patients. It was often challenging (see the cons), but speaking with people all over the country with a variety of medical needs is always fascinating to someone interested in people and medicine; the relationships forged were short-term, but often quite rewarding. That said, I did not always feel MY role operated in THEIR best interest. When I did, though? It was great. There are few things better than reassuring someone whose health condition has always precluded securing health insurance that no, you're NOT going to take it away--that despite their HIV positive status, or history of cancer, or other previously exclusionary criterion, they WOULD be covered, and that you are only asking questions to give the insurer more information in order to better meet their needs. (See below, however, for my ethical concerns related to this.) It was nice to be able to choose between business casual dress or scrubs. Wearing scrubs to work is cost-effective, and comfortable.
Cons
After the (very good) training phase, employees were expected to adhere to near-ridiculous quotas, with their time away from the phone literally recorded to the second. (Anxiety about the length of a bathroom visit was a very real concern, for example.) While employees were expected to give every second to the company (and if you've never sat in one position for hours on end, you don't know how rejuvenating even a 1-minute break, used to walk around the maze of cubicles, can be!), RSA had NO compunction about informing them, when work was slow, that they were taking VOLUNTARY unpaid leave. This means that if the phone system had a glitch, or calls were slow on a given day, they'd send people home without pay. Sometimes, people were fine with this. There were days when I was! But other times, it was sort of nice to have a slower day, and to be paid for it. But RSA's stance was that, if you were being paid, they were going to wring EVERY penny out of you! Then there were the ethical concerns. I started at RSA before the ACA was rolled out; then, we collected information from insurance applicants intended to help underwriters determine their eligibility for coverage and/or the rates they would be charged. With the rollout of the ACA, applicants were no longer denied coverage--or charged more--for preexisting health conditions. Yet we called them just the same, under the pretense of gathering information to better help them utilize their new coverage. Here's the thing: that was a lie. It was to gather information about their health, just as it had been pre-Affordable Care Act. Was it legal to gather the information? No. Not if it was willingly given to us. But we didn't really state the purpose honestly, so it felt unethical to gather it. You see, most people believe that insurance companies already have their complete health histories. In fact, they have very, very little information about applicants OR their insureds. Instead, they have one source of information: prescription histories. These can tell a great deal about a person---but can very easily be misinterpreted, given the many uses each drug may have. For example, the beta-blocker metoprolol can be prescribed for blood pressure, but is also often prescribed to treat anxiety. Before the ACA, the role of the MCM was to use the warehoused information about their prescription histories, and to round it out so that the insurance company had a better idea of the REAL medical history. Prescriptions alone tell only part of the story, and it can be a deceptive part. With the advent of the ACA, insurers really had no right to this information. They could still try to extrapolate info from the warehoused Rx database---but were wrong as often as not. Despite the fact they could not deny applicants coverage based on their histories, THEY STILL WANTED THAT PRIVATE MEDICAL INFORMATION---the very information we guarded so very carefully. (And yes, the records WERE safe in RSA's hands---it's just that they were gathering the information for rather dubious purposes). As a registered nurse who'd taken the Hippocratic Oath, I never felt comfortable gathering this information. My oath was to "first do no harm," yet I had no way of knowing how the insurer would use the information. Ultimately, the ethical issues pushed me to resign. It was very difficult to tell the (often angry, always confused) client, "You're right, you don't have to provide the information--but if you DO, it can help us tailor your coverage to your needs" when, in fact, there were only a very few health conditions for which tailored programs were provided, none of which really required an protracted, invasive interview. (I mean, if someone is taking three kinds of insulin, it's safe to assume s/he's diabetic and would benefit from receiving information about the program BCBS has for diabetics. They didn't need me to spend an hour gathering information about the client's ED or gynecological surgeries or depression to glean that!) And then there were the angry clients. And who could blame them? I would not ---did not! I was an enrollee, too!--speak to someone working for RSA seeking my PMI! It is confidential information no one is obligated to share, any longer, with insurers. That we asked for it was brazen--and that some applicants were pissed off was to be expected. It was not hard for me to remain pleasant and reassuring--and indeed, this "won" most clients over, so that they were willing to compete the interviews. However, I didn't ever feel as though I was benefitting anyone other than the insurer in this scenario. Had I felt the client really would benefit? I would have felt a LOT better about the job. Instead, I felt sleazy. The health benefits were abysmal, and expensive. Given the nature of the business, this is inexcusable.