Blue Cross customers fume as insurer scrambles to fix ACA enrollment errors
Source: The News & Observer
But the scale of the malfunctions exceeded anything Blue Cross officials had expected, and customers now worry the insurance giant’s miscues could leave them uninsured for weeks until the situation is resolved. The difficulties have become so widespread that this week the N.C. Department of Justice sent Blue Cross a letter asking it to explain what went wrong, how many customers were affected and how it plans to rectify the billing errors that were made in recent weeks.
. . . Of the estimated 25,000 customers who didn’t get the health insurance policy they had selected, about 17,000 remained to be processed Thursday, Blue Cross officials said Thursday. The company’s goal is to activate coverage retroactively to Jan. 1 for customers who made their first payment to Blue Cross.
. . . . But customers are concerned that amid the chaos, if their policies turn out not to be valid on Saturday, Jan. 16, they not only will go uninsured in January but they also would have missed Friday’s federal deadline to apply for health insurance for a Feb. 1 effective date. If that happens, these customers would likely have to go without health insurance for two months as a result of Blue Cross’ mistakes.
. .. . As of Thursday, the N.C. Department of Insurance had received 168 complaints from Blue Cross customers. The department is forwarding names to Blue Cross of individual customers who should be prioritized for health coverage, flagging priority matters with “very sad case,” and “urgent!” and “we can feel the frustration mounting from consumers!”
Read more: http://www.newsobserver.com/article54901695.html
The CEO Brad Wilson claims there are backups in other states and tried in part to blame this on the ACA. Because BCBS was dumb enough to shift to a new data management system at the precise time they brought some of this on themselves.
But, the frustration here (which have engaged Mr. Zazen in at least 20 hours on the phone over the past two months and me in 7) also include the increased premiums and deductibles for many and the major shift in in and out of network coverage. That means many people are having to look for new doctors.
In North Carolina at least, the GOP has deliberately made a mess of this by not expanding Medicaid, but the involvement of private insurers in ACA was a mess from the start. I credit Obama for making a major agenda item and fighting them to get what little we had, but it's made it clear that privatizing health insurance is a disaster.
What some mainstream Dems and Republicans don't get is how angry and frustrated people are in general--and people who support the ACA and concept of healthcare for all are just saying screw it, we need some kind of fiat to give Medicare to everyone. They see the comparative ease of Medicare for their older relatives. Trump-ists etc. I guess want to see it dismantled so they can go back to the low premiums-due-to-not-insuring-actual-sick-people days of the 1980s.
I know HRC is trying to be pragmatic about Single Payer but I doubt she grasps how frustrating it is when you're underemployed and terrified about your future to have layers of bullshit, cost, and exhaustion added to your healthcare worries.
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Don't get me wrong; I prefer single payer myself. Experience has shown it to be the most cost effective by far. And even with private insurance, the government does need to get involved in regulating the coverage and subsidizing the costs for low-income persons.
But plenty of developed countries achieve universal coverage with private insurance companies, including Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, and Switzerland, among others. (If someone thinks I'm mistaken about that or that single-payer is universal in developed countries outside the U.S., please take a few minutes to look it up. One place to start is a web search for "how does health insurance work in other countries."
Yeah, right!!
