Preface
In December of 2013, I drafted: A Letter to Santa: All I Want
for Christmas is my Health Insurance Card! It documents my October – December 2013 Obamacare nightmare. The good
news is that Santa came through! Not only did I get the one card requested, Anthem
issued me THREE (3) different insurance cards!
After many, many phone calls, I was advised by Anthem to use one of the
three cards and promised that the other two policies would be cancelled. After
using the “correct” insurance card for my January physical, I continued to
receive invoices from Anthem for the policies that were supposedly cancelled. Hours
on hold yielded assistance from two friendly Anthem agents. EVERYTHING appeared
to be fixed! I was down to one, fully-operational policy! And then, on April
26, 2014, I received an invoice from my doctor for $495. for my “free” annual
physical! So, my Obamacare Odyssey continues.
Since Santa was so effective, I guess I should’ve worked with the Easter
Bunny to confirm that the one “freebie” promised by my new policy would
actually be free!
Incidentally, the invoice details that the Preventive
Physical costs $235. Urinalysis for
urine I don’t remember providing costs $15.
Electrocardiogram costs $90. TDAP
vaccine costs $95 and the actual administering of the vaccine costs $60. So….even if I, eventually, get the physical “free”….I’ll
still be paying $260 for the other services that, Pre-Obamacare, used to be “free”
as well. (I think I want to change my letter to Santa…I want a time machine…I want
to go back in time to when the affordable premiums I paid for my health
insurance actually provided me with a co-pay for my prescriptions and physicals
that were actually completely free!)
A Letter to Santa: All I Want for Christmas is my Health
Insurance Card
Dear Santa,
I’m
asking you to travel to another dimension on your holiday run this year, a
dimension not only of sight and sound, but also of mind; a journey into a
wondrous land whose boundaries are that of the imagination. Your destination?
No, not the Twilight Zone. It’s the Obamacare Zone.
You see, Santa,
all I want for Christmas this year is my health insurance card, proof that I
truly have healthcare insurance. I’ve never had to trouble you before about
such things because obtaining health insurance coverage used to be a rational,
organized, efficient process. But after almost three months of struggle, you
are my last hope! Since the Affordable Care Act forced Aetna to cancel my
affordable policy, I have been making every effort to obtain less affordable healthcare
insurance. I’ve been a good girl this year, Santa. Computer savvy, fairly
fluent in the insurance-speak of deductibles, co-pays and the many tiers of
generics and non-generics, I started shopping early, as early as the first day
the exchanges opened. .
After looking at
the options on the Connecticut Healthcare Exchange, I cringed at the
premiums. So, I decided to go directly
to Anthem and pursue a catastrophic policy. If I wanted to maintain a monthly
premium close to my pre-Obamacare one, I had to raise my deductible from $5000
to $15,000. On October 2, 2013, I filled
out Anthem’s six page application and sent it to them. Weeks later, after several follow-up phone
calls, I was told that the catastrophic plan I wished to purchase would be
phased out due to the Affordable Care Act.
And, I had applied too early.
Even though underwriting was now outlawed, I needed to apply no earlier
than sixty days from the date my coverage was to start. I should resubmit my application, for a
policy that would be eventually cancelled, on November 1st.
Not wishing to
jump through hoops for a temporary plan, I returned to the Connecticut
Healthcare Exchange. In absolutely no
time, I had applied for an Anthem
Bronze Plan that was definitely not as good as my current plan, but would only cost me an extra $1500 per year in
premiums. Then, I waited. What was
the next step? When would my policy and my all-important insurance card
arrive? After a week, I started to make calls. The Connecticut Exchange
directed me to Anthem. Anthem Connecticut connected me to Anthem California,
who, subsequently, jockeyed me back to Anthem Connecticut. Throughout my quest
for policy validation, I was put on hold many times and subjected to music that
was so loud and irritating that I would almost beg to be water boarded at GITMO
if, it meant that, somehow, the music
could be stopped. Finally, a friendly voice came on the line and informed me
that she couldn’t talk to me. Anthem wasn’t licensed to sell the Bronze plan
listed on the Connecticut exchange. She cheerfully advised me to call back
sometime in November; hopefully, they’d have licensure too sell and discuss
that plan by then.
Worried that
waiting until six weeks prior to my current policy’s expiration might leave me
holding an application for an insurance policy that Anthem was not licensed to
sell, I returned to the Anthem website. It linked me to their shopping site
called HIX Application Capture. It
sounded a bit like a code name for a super-secret military hostage-taking mission,
but I proceeded anyway. Once again, I keyed in my personal information in order
to obtain an Anthem Core Direct Access w/HSA-cadg plan for an estimated monthly
premium of $419.19. But…there was no premium guarantee. At that rate, I would be paying $1800 more per
year to get coverage that I believed would be (no official plan documents were available yet) close to my current
AETNA plan. They might charge me more. They might provide me with less. Prior
to Obamacare, I would never buy an insurance plan without an absolute guarantee
of the premium price nor would I buy a plan with a vague guarantee of what was
covered. But, I was desperate. The clock
was ticking. I even pre-paid the estimated
premium with my precious credit card number.
Fear of no health insurance coverage now surpassed my fear of identity
theft. HIX Application Capture was a hostage-taking mission, after all!
And the hostage was me.
Two days later, a
packet arrived from the Connecticut Health Insurance Exchange. It informed me that the Connecticut Exchange
had advertised inaccurate coverage for the Anthem Bronze plan listed on their
site. I should read the corrected pages of said policy and decide if I still
wanted it. I didn’t. Anthem wasn’t licensed
to sell that plan in Connecticut, yet. I
checked “NO” in the box, dropped the envelope in the mail and waited for my insurance
card to arrive for my more expensive plan, a plan that Anthem was licensed to sell in Connecticut. The
wait time promised was two to three weeks. And when the three weeks expired, and
no word, no e*mail, and no insurance card arrived, I called Anthem, and used
the HIX customer feedback instant messaging system, and called, and
waited. Half of the time, I was stuck in
a continuous loop of non-existence. I
was out-of-category. I had already submitted an application so I didn’t fit the
Shopping for Insurance category. I couldn’t use the Applicant Category because I needed an application number to access
it. I was given a Control Number but it wasn’t an Application Number. Tricky
stuff. Round and round I went, lots of
hold music, lots of cheerful voices, lots of promises, lots of waiting.
Finally, Santa, on December 4, 2013, with 27
days left on my AETNA coverage and only 20 days left until to your sleigh’s
Christmas Eve run, I reached an Anthem agent, a very friendly agent. She told me, promised me, assured me that I
existed on her screen. I was right there in front of her. I
didn’t have to worry. She told me,
promised me, assured me that within two weeks, (I had been given that two-week
promise a month ago), I would receive my official documents including my hallowed
insurance card.
Desperate and
exhausted, I begged, (we hostages often do that)
“Can you screen
print the page that proves my existence in your system and e*mail or fax it to
me? You see, Aetna has offered to extend my coverage if I’m willing to pay $560
per month rather than the $278 I used to pay them. Since I already paid Anthem $419.19, I really
can’t afford to pay them for coverage as well IF I actually do have coverage.
But, I need proof from you.
“No, I can’t
printscreen.”
“Can you e*mail or
fax me a letter that approves my coverage?”
“No, but I can send you a letter. I don’t have your ID
number yet. But, I can send you a letter with all the numbers I do have.”
“How long will that take?”
“About two
weeks.”
“You mean the two-week
time frame it is going to take for my official plan documents to arrive?”
“Yes.”
“Is there anything you can e*mail, fax or text me so
that I have written proof that I am approved in your system, and that I will be
covered?”
“No. But, you can
write down the numbers I do have.”
The high-tech modes
of instant communication do not exist in the Obamacare Zone. No faxes, e*mails,
or text messages could be sent, even the federal government’s own technological
solution, their website, won’t operate! Prior to Obamacare, insurance companies
were even willing to use overnight mail services. But, alas, such services exist
no longer… at least not in the Obamacare Zone. I would be given the time to find paper and my
trusty No. 2, yellow Ticonderoga pencil.
I found them. I wrote down an AMI#, an App C# and a Ref#. Two of the
numbers were the same except one of them had five zeroes in front of it. I
could relate to zeroes, the process had made me feel like one. Numbers are
supposed to make you feel better. I don’t.
And now, I wait, again.
There’s a lot of
waiting and wondering in this new Affordable Care Act dimension, Santa, a
dimension not only of broken websites and sounds of torturous hold music, but
also of mind; a journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of the
imagination not documentation. You
must rely upon your imagination, fantasize that, yes, proof of healthcare
coverage will come, maybe, in time for Christmas. Maybe, it’ll arrive on your sleigh, Santa! You
can probably pick the policy up on the Island of Misfit Toys! Delivery should
be easy. Just look for the sign post up ahead. But, beware! You will be entering the
Obamacare Zone, where everything is free for the poor, affordable for the rich,
and paid for by the middle class, a group that will soon exist only in the land of imagination along
with the Easter Bunny, Elves, and you, Santa. But until then…I’ll still need
that health insurance card. Santa,
you’re my last hope!
Sincerely,
Mary M. Glaser
Simsbury, C
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