Damn BCBS

[ToLiveIsToFly]

One consequence of Margy losing her job is that effective Jan 1, we moved all 3 of us from her employer's health plan to mine.

Mine's a better plan (lower copays, plus hers had a $500 limit on coverage for well-baby care (!!)).

Frankie's visit was Tuesday (and it went extremely well, thank you), and the time came to talk about one-year immunizations. We had the first shots in the office, and then were stunned by a ~$500 bill for them. Chicago offers all residents free immunizations, so he got his six-month shots at the public health place.

Doc is all ready to give Frankie his one-year shots, but she remembers what happened the last time he got shots there, so she asks us if we made sure the new plan covered them. I said yep, since I had had a long conversation with them a couple weeks ago. She asked if I asked about well-baby care in general or shots in particular. I couldn't remember, so I called BCBS to get a definitive answer.

We don't have our cards yet, and the printout they gave us doesn't have a phone number on there. Or it has a phone number, but it's only for providers. So doc calls, and it's only a number for providers in an emergency. So I call my HR department, and he goes to the BCBS website and it's down. I call a coworker in Chicago and he gives me the number on his card. I call that number and the automatic service won't put me through without 2 ID numbers, neither of which I have (I have the ID numbers I SHOULD need; this thing just wanted stuff that only my employer would have.)

So we leave doc's office without the shots. I call the number again later in the day and it's working. The person who answers won't tell me anything until I tell her about my PREVIOUS health insurance. So we spend half an hour straightening all that stuff out. They say that his shots are fully covered, no deductible, no copay, no nothing, up to the allowable amount. When I get off the phone, wife points out to me that if we don't know what the allowable amount is, and we don't know what our doctor's office charges, we don't know if we'd get another several-hundred-dollar bill.

We're leaving town tomorrow for a couple weeks, Frankie needs these shots. So rather than try and sort this stuff out and get another appointment at the doc's, it's off to the Chicago Dept of Public Health place. (I didn't have to go there last time. God, that place s-u-c-k-s. Not because of all the poor people, or the depressing 60's architecture or the grime, or the short staffing. It's a public facility in a badly fiscally mismanaged city in a really bad economic time. We expect all of that. It's the people who work there, and how much they act like they despise everyone who comes in there.)

Anyway, I get home, and I have a letter from BCBS saying that they've reviewed my past coverage and and have reduced the "pre-existing condition waiting period" by 92 days, and I only have to wait through the first of October. WTF? I call them back, and half an hour later, it looks like the problem is solved - the last person I talked to made a typo that said my coverage last year started on 10/1 instead of 1/1.

So (just like everyone else, I imagine), I hate waiting in line and I hate waiting on hold and I hate having to do multiple things to get the same simple problem solved. But I understand that it's a part of life, and the last CSR, I'm sure, just made an honest mistake. It's annoying, but understandable.

But here's (sorry it took so long) what pisses me off: my new health insurance is BCBS-Illinois. My wife's health insurance, which I was on last year: BCBS-Illinois. The health insurance I was on for the 2+ years before I went on my wife's insurance: BCBS-Illinois. They required my SSN for every application. So I don't really like this whole "prove you've had health insurance for a certain length of time or we'll make you wait before we covere a previously-existing condition" thing, but I concede that they can do it, and I understand why they'd want to. But Jesus Christ, before you ASSUME I was uninsured, maybe you could check YOUR OWN RECORDS to see if I was insured by YOU!!!

[Snaxx]

Are they also in charge of determining the college football national champion?

[ulysses5019]

Are they also in charge of determining the college football national champion?

So that's why we didn't win.