Jay Gets Obamacare
02-27-2015
I decided to get health insurance in 2015.
In California Obamacare is called “Covered
California”. In early February, I went
to www.coveredca.com and filled out several pages of forms – which wasn’t all
that bad; it only took about half an hour – but then the fun began.
In the last step you’re supposed to Pick a Health
Plan. I had pretty well chosen the least
of 30 evils ahead of time. I click on
“Pick a Health Plan” and it issues an error: “8STO0163 – try again later.” Okay, no big deal, I’m sure the site is very
busy because the Open Enrollment deadline is just two weeks away. I’ll try later. Maybe it won’t be as busy in the morning.
Over the next week I tried several dozen times, at
all times of the day and night and it always issued the same 8STO0163 error. Finally I decided to call them on February 10th. The customer service agent got the exact same
error. She said she could open a system
problem ticket but it would take at least a couple weeks to get it fixed and
the deadline was less than a week away.
She said the system had been having problems that day so I should just
try again that afternoon. So I tried
again and again over the next four days.
No luck.
On February 15, the last day of Open Enrollment, I
opened on online chat session with them.
I was number 963 in the queue. It
took about an hour and a half, but finally it was my turn. I told her about the problem I was having and
she typed back, “Oh, I can’t help with specific problems on applications, only
with general advice.” Tits-on-a-bull
came to mind. So I called the 800 number
again. However, this time it was so busy
they couldn’t handle any more calls or even put me on hold.
The next day, February 16th (Columbus
Day), I get an email from them saying they had extended the deadline so I tried
calling them again and got right through.
I worked with several of their people for 35 minutes and FINALLY got
covered. I would just need to pay by
February 24th for coverage effective March 1st.
Well, I still hadn’t received a bill by Saturday,
February 21st, so I didn’t see how I could possibly pay by the 24th. Luckily, they had given me the phone number
of Blue Shield so I called them directly and paid them over the phone with a
credit card. That takes care of
that. Or so I thought.
On Monday the 23rd, I get a letter dated
February 17th (the day after I got my coverage). It said (paraphrasing now) – Oh, you know
what? We’re only going to cover you for
90 days because we haven’t been able to verify your income [even though the rep
I worked with on the 16th knew my unemployment details and
everything better than I did]. Please
send us proof of your income (bank statement, tax return, check stub, etc.). Well, I would have to send proof of
NON-income since I’m currently unemployed!
So as soon as I get my February bank statement,
I’ll send it to them, although I don’t know how that would prove my income. I suppose I should notate every entry on it
to explain what it is.
So stay tuned . . .