For the past couple of weeks, I have devoted a chunk of time to finding the best individual health insurance plan. Having worked in a doctor’s office for most of my life, I thought it would be an easy process. Especially since health insurance is something most people have, and therefore theoretically have chosen. I thought there would be a bunch of useful tools. I thought the internet was the only thing i needed.

I thought wrong.

Here’s what happened, and what I imagine is a fairly typical process.

1) First stop: Google.

What better place to find a comprehensive comparison shopping site for health insurance? Here’s what you get when you google “compare health insurance plans.”

So out of the top Google results, there was only one website that was even halfway informative. The problem with Ehealthinsurance was that there were too many plans to choose from! Many of them had slight price differences from the same provider with seemingly identical benefits.

However, the site did let me compare plans side by side which was helpful. Although there was technically the ability to print out the comparison, this feature was not functional and really frustrated me, since I could not return to my results the next day without filling out all the same information.

Regardless, the site left my head spinning with all of the options. Soon after, my phone started ringing from the information I had given to other lead gen sites in order to get “instant quotes.”

This was starting to remind me very much of searching for a credit card processor….

2) What to do next? Ask my friends.

After livechatting with a rep and speaking to some other reps on the phone, I was still unsure as to what the best plan was for me. Each person seemed to be recommending different companies, different deductibles, different coverage, etc. How to choose?

I started complaining about this hassle to anyone who would listen, and it so happened that a friend of mine had a friend of a friend (you get the idea) who worked with health insurance. I called her and she counseled me through my frustration.

Now with a better idea of what I should be looking for, I decided to apply to a bunch of plans and see which I qualified for.

3) Giant fail. Back to square one.

It turns out you’re eligible for almost any plan as a healthy young adult. Fail.

4)  Local love.

I really wanted to figure out this thing on my own without asking my father (a doctor) for help. With a heaving sigh, I dialed his number and asked for help. The internet had failed me.

He connected me with his small town insurance agent, who was able to counsel me, provide me with excellent service, and explain which plan to choose.

Conclusion: This experience was disempowering and frustrating. The websites were bad. I did not want to get called randomly by sales reps. And at the end of the day, I did what people did 20 years ago…go to a local business for better service.