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Subject:RE: What to do? From:"Anita Legsdin" <anita -dot- legsdin -at- watchmark -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Tue, 28 Oct 2003 16:29:02 -0800
When I wrote for Blue Shield, our contracts and medical brochures were reviewed not only by our legal counsel, but by the medical directors, who were all MDs. (Just like my software manuals are now reviewed by software engineers.) We set up standard paragraphs, according to the benefits that were offered. Writing a medical insurance brochure usually consisted of picking option A for office visits, option 13.7 for hospital visits, etc. It was an excellent candidate for single sourcing/reuse.
If your medical insurance booklet were written by a physician, you can believe me it would not be understandable. The move toward simple English in medical insurance booklets was a boon to humanity.
Medical insurance brochures are an excellent example of highly technical material that must be presented so that it's understood by anyone at 8th grade reading level (or whatever the standards are now). It's legally binding, because it's generally the only information that a person has about their medical coverage. If you want to find out some of the complexities involved, as an MD what the word "leg" refers to; then ask your grandmother the same question. You'll get two different answers.
Anita Legsdin
-----Original Message-----
From: Gene Kim-Eng [mailto:techwr -at- genek -dot- com]
Sent: Tuesday, October 28, 2003 12:08 PM
To: TECHWR-L
Subject: Re: What to do?
More like "should be." I'd feel a lot more comfortable
about my medical insurance if it *was* written by
doctors, and most of the best aircraft flight manuals
(though not necessarily magazine articles) *are* written
by people with pilot training, if not licenses.
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