wan-na find something?

Wednesday, March 26, 2008

kaiser, i used to love you

but thou hast forsaken me.

okay, a bit dramatic. but i'm annoyed. they
cancelled the bean's coverage and never even bothered to let me know. when she was born, they said she had to have her own plan, because she doesn't need dental coverage, and they couldn't just add her on to our current account. what the hell kind of stupidery is that?

so when we started getting bills, i called member services to see if i could just send one payment for both plans. yes, i'm lazy like that. hell, i don't even write checks - i pay online. heh. anyway, i was assured that it would be no problem, as long as i referenced both account numbers on the payments. cool.


a few months go by, i'm making the payments, all is well. february comes, we take the bean for her
4-month checkup, great. and then it's almost april, and i realize that we haven't received an appointment card for her 6-month visit.

so i call and get immediately transferred to member services. and i'm told that her account's been cancelled for
non-payment. what the fuck? AND it'd been cancelled back in january. but when we went in february, no one said a damn word.

well, it turns out that they'd been crediting our account with all the payments i'd been sending in. and stupid me, i'm so oblivious, i didn't even realize that we'd not been getting billed for coverage for the last month or so. duh - we had a
credit balance! but what annoyed me was that they never bothered to send us any notices of late payments, or even a notice of impending termination. my little friend monica in member services confirmed this when she looked at the outgoing mail screen on her trusty computer.

but of course, i couldn't get it resolved over the phone. oh, no, i had to fax in a letter to have the account reviewed and reinstated. so fucking stupid. and in the meantime, the bean's livin' on the edge, with no medical insurance coverage. great.

so today, almost a week after i faxed in that letter (with no response whatsoever), i called again and this time, i got shit done. she's covered again and all i have to do is send in a payment that would make a sizable dent in the national deficit.


yay! i'm so calling in with poop issues, questions about giving her water, what kind of cereal to start with. might as well take advantage of health insurance in ways aside from actual medical treatment or hospitalization, since [knocking on wood] the bean is quite healthy.

18 comments:

  1. I HATE health insurance. They make it so hard.

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  2. I think it's time for no more eye-blockers.

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  3. to some Kaiser = the devil. glad you got it all straightened out :<

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  4. Ugh. Stoopid Kaiser. They called me yesterday to see why I was refusing cancer treatment. Um, I don't have cancer (that I know of...unless they haven't told me!!)! Grrrr! And of course, it took and act of Congress to get in touch with a human to confirm I do not, in fact, have cancer they never told me about.

    While bitching/commiserating with a friend, she told me Kaiser told her she had Hep B and she was totally freaked and it took them a while to call her and say, "Whoops! Our bad. You don't have Hep B!" So she agonized for nothing.

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  5. P.S. Blogger just gave me this for word verification to post a comment:

    getsex

    Lovely.

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  6. Wan, did you have Kaiser for prenatal care? How is it? I'm thinking about switching out of Kaiser when open enrollment comes up. My friend had an awful experience with prenatal care with Kaiser.

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  7. pink, i actually had awesome prenatal care at kaiser - both times. i really am a kaiser groupie, normally. of course, it's the administrative side that managed to piss me off.

    monkey, you're probably right. perhaps manana.

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  8. Thanks, Wan. I'll reconsider and ask around some more before making any decisions. :)

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  9. Because Kaiser is more stupid than any other insurance out there!! They are the poop or the insurance universe...I can not say enough bad things about them!!!

    Glad you have insurance coverage though! :)

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  10. I am soooooo not a Kaiser fan.

    Says the girl who can't get an OBGYN appt for over a year now......

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  11. We had Kaiser through work for six years - and then they accidently added a family of eight to our plan that didn't belong to us. They billed us for them every month, we fought with them that they didn't belong to us... they canceled our insurance for our entire company over that family and didn't tell us for two months.

    Sadly I really liked my Kaiser doctors. :(

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  12. STUPID health insurance! good thing for a healthy bean!!

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  13. I feel kinda special knowing that I've at least glimpsed the bean with out that bar.

    Health insurance companies suck.

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  14. Ok fine, I'll be the first to say that I'm grateful for and happy with my insurance company. But I don't have Kaiser and I have a PPO so that probably makes a difference.

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  15. I used to have Kaiser. It can really suck at times but if you know how to work the system there, you can get your crap taken care of asap! Now I'm on H's health insurance, Blue Shield and it takes about 5 months to get a specialist. With Kaiser it would often be a month or less.
    However, they did forget to change thier gloves at one point and gave my mom a staff infections when she went in to have blood drawn. Bad Kaiser, bad bad...::shakes finger::
    Glad to hear it worked out for you and esp. Bean.

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  16. Pacific Care POS with HSA - Awesome!! All the good things about a PPO, but with the benefits of an HMO and HSA account. Love it!

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  17. insurance companies can truly be the devil. i'm glad you finally got it all worked out though.

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