Affordable Care Act Debacle

Very soon I'm going to write about my favorite new piece of technology available to diabetics, the Dexcom continuous blood glucose monitor. Tonight though I can't sleep because of all the insurance problems that have been caused by the U.S. Government and I just want to rant for a moment about all the "help" this mess has been.

Being Diabetic since I was nine I have always been very careful to choose my employers based on whether they have a group health insurance benefit. I have not taken jobs and left jobs because of problems with insurance. My current employer offered one of the best plans I had ever had. I say offered because that is now past tense.

With the advent of the affordable healthcare act Blue Cross Blue Shield stopped offering our plan as a Government approved policy. It had a $500 deductable and 100 percent coverage after the deductable was met. It was a wonderful plan, but for some reason was not longer available under the Affordable Healthcare Act. Among the new choices from Blue Cross Blue Shield there were none that offered 100 percent coverage after the deductable. United Healthcare offered a plan though that had a $1000 deductable and 100 percent coverage and we were told the rest of the coverage was comparable to BCBS. My company switched to United Healthcare Mid year to avoid paying penalties. Since that time it has been one hassle after another getting insulin pump and other things taken care of.

My OmniPod pump that BCBS covered was an issue for United Healthcare so I switched to a pump I don't like. Getting sensors for the Dexcom is becoming tedious each time something that was not a problem with BCBS. Now I found that the mid year switch may be costing me another $800 because of confusion.

In late may I received a authorization from BCBS for pump supplies from OmniPod. The letter stated that the date of service had to be before June 15 because insurance would run out on June 15. I was confused because the policies were supposed to switch on June 1. I called OmniPod first to see where the order came from. They told me that I was on an auto refill program and they were going to send me new supplies every three months. I told them about the insurance change and they said that it appeared BCBS had already ok'd the purchase.
I called BCBS. I explained the situation and told them I wanted to stop the order if there was going to be a problem. She said that it looked like the insurance would be in place until the 15th and I should be fine as long as the order was before then. I confirmed this with her, telling her we were switching to UHC on June 1. She told me that the 15 day hold over was standard practice to make sure switching was smooth and there was no uncovered period. I let the order go ahead.

Today I received a letter from Blue Cross Blue Shield saying that the insulin pump supplies delivered on June 10 are uncovered because the policy was not in force at that time. I'm going to call them tomorrow but don't expect much luck. I also don't expect much luck with UHC in submitting this claim because they never wanted to pay for this pump anyway. So there's a $799 bill that's not covered sitting there for me all thanks to this wonderful Government act that took away my good insurance, saddled me with inferior coverage and has generally made life more difficult.

I'm so glad they are looking out for me in Washington.