Ugh! This whole health insurance situation through the health exchange has been a nightmare and Im not even able to get out of it! Im about to go into details that no one will probably read, but I need to rant. In February, I contacted Connect For Health CO (the health exchange) to update my household income amount with them. I was afraid the amount Id put down when I enrolled last November was lower than the amount wed be making this year, and didnt want to end up owing at the end of the year. Well, they took several months to successfully process that change, with several complications along the way. When they finally processed it, they canceled my old enrollment info and entered new enrollment info (just because I updated my income!), and in the process, they enrolled me in a different health insurance plan, not the one Id signed up for. It is with the same health insurance company (Kaiser) and has the same monthly cost, but the plan number is different and somehow it is a worse plan despite costing the same, with the deductible and my payment percentage for medical costs being twice as much as that on my old plan. At that point, Id already decided I didnt want to go through the health exchange anymore and wanted to enroll directly with Kaiser for next year- especially since the money Im saving going through the health exchange is a very small amount. So, instead of trying to get them to understand theyd changed me to a different plan I had NOT chosen and trying to get them to fix it, which I knew would take several months if it succeeded at all, I called on September 2nd and asked Connect for Health CO to completely cancel my enrollment. They said, sure, and my last active date on the plan would be September 30th. Well in October I received another bill, and on October 20th I called Kaiser to ask if my enrollment had been canceled. They said no, they hadnt received anything about canceling my account- it wasnt even pending. So I called Connect for Health CO again at that time and asked them to re-submit the cancellation info to Kaiser. They said yes, they would do so and that my cancellation date would still be in September, leaving me with a last effective date of Sept. 30th. I was told it would take up to 72 hours for Kaiser to receive the cancellation info and up to 4-5 weeks for them to process & update it. Today, Nov. 3rd, I called Kaiser again to see if theyd at least received the order to cancel. Nope, they said they hadnt, and even pulled up my account info with Connect For Health COs system to see if it appeared canceled on there. They told me that it shows an ending date of December 31st on that system and that I needed to contact Connect For Health to let them know that needs to be updated. I called Connect For Health again right after that. The man I spoke to told me theyd resubmitted the cancellation to Kaiser on Oct. 20th, when I asked them to, and that it is pending Kaisers response. He said that the screen he was looking at says an end date of Sept. 30th (not Dec. 31 as the Kaiser person told me it shows). He said to allow 3 weeks (what happened to 4-5 weeks?) for Kaiser to receive and process the resubmitted cancellation info. He couldnt offer an explanation as to why Kaiser hadnt received the cancellation info from the first time I cancelled, on September 2nd. This is going in circles and I dont know if or when this will ever successfully get cancelled. Here I am, stuck paying for a plan I dont want (which isnt even the correct plan I signed up for!), and I have to keep paying the bills Im getting or else Im pretty sure Kaiser will cancel me for non-payment and then they wont accept me later when I try to enroll directly in a plan with Kaiser after all this does get sorted out and canceled, if it ever does. And actually, even the amount I owe is complicated, because back when I made the change about my income and my billing amount changed, I started paying the new billing amount too early I guess (even though I started paying it on the month I was told to). So the amount I owed got to be negative 300-something. I just kept paying the monthly amount I was supposed to, even though my owed amount was in the negative, because I didnt want to mess anything up worse and I figured after I canceled Id get refunded whatever I was owed. After last months bill, which I didnt pay (thinking it was canceled), it went down to negative 100-something. Thats not enough to pay the next bill, so Im a little bit overdue I guess. Im not sure what will happen with the next bill or if Ill be getting in trouble. The person I spoke to with Kaiser today told me I can still call and enroll in a plan for next year directly with Kaiser, during their open enrollment starting Nov. 15, since supposedly my plan with Connect for Health CO is showing and end date of Dec. 31. But I will not enroll in something else while all this is still going on. I even suspect Ill be renewed for the Connect For Health/Kasier thing for 2015! This is only a very basic and, believe it or not, brief summary to give a hint at the main complications that have been taking place over the months. The whole thing has had me frustrated to tears. I was a fool for enrolling. Thanks, stupid health exchange.
Posted on: Mon, 03 Nov 2014 19:00:13 +0000
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