Need Help: Blue Cross Blue Shield Recent Comments

re: Need Help: Blue Cross Blue Shield

2010-10-11 22:15:18

posted by: Stizostedion vitreum. Seeing the other health insurance thread on here with the seeing the light topic...

I thought I would reveal the fruits of my efforts with my goal to obtain my own private insurance policy with BCBS of North Dakota...

I was denied coverage because I have arthritis.

What a crock of shyt.

re: Need Help: Blue Cross Blue Shield

2010-06-01 23:03:51

posted by: Stizostedion vitreum. Good to know! The next few months will tell a tale.

re: Need Help: Blue Cross Blue Shield

2010-06-01 18:29:57

posted by: Kaptain. I will give some general advice to anyone that has health insurance. Know your policy well and question everything. They will screw you out of every cent they can. I am fortunate enough to work in a Union shop that has been afforded an IPS (insurance problem solver) and this individual has saved our members thousands of dollars. We got this position because our HR department is shorthanded and maybe a little disinterested, to say the least. To make a long story short, the company I work for is self-insured, but of course has contracted a firm to manage the paperwork. They make a lot of mistakes, and for some reason, they are never in the employees favor. Even at that, as an individual you have to keep on top of things in a timely matter because there is a time frame in which a dispute has to be acted on or you are SOL.

re: Need Help: Blue Cross Blue Shield

2010-05-31 23:11:09

posted by: eyexer. one of the worst things with bcbs is that if you are out of state, everything but emergencies have to be pre approved. what a hassle. one last thing. bcbs covers roughly 90% of all north dakotans. we have more elderly per capita than most any other state. so common sense will tell you that you are healthy, why would you want to get into a pool with so many sick and elderly people. the claims to loss ratio is way out of wack. this is why the cost of bcbs plans in nd is so ridiculously high.

re: Need Help: Blue Cross Blue Shield

2010-05-31 22:47:48

posted by: Stizostedion vitreum. Thanks guys. I really appreciate the feedback. I have learned alot from this thread so far. It is ALWAYS nice to hear the things that the insurers don't want you to know. I hope to learn more tips and tricks from people who have been there as clients and from past and present Insurance agents. That is how big companies make the majority of their money...through the ignorance of their clients.

Had a nice weekend in MN. Kids literally caught well over a hundred panfish, and I caught a 17 inch largemouth! We released everything.

Later. Stizo :)

re: Need Help: Blue Cross Blue Shield

2010-05-28 18:48:50

posted by: Ama Guzo. These are absolutely the worst people to deal with. If anything happens with your claims expect to spend a lot of time on the phone with a supervisor. Just my two cents from personal experience.

re: Need Help: Blue Cross Blue Shield

2010-05-27 22:50:08

posted by: eyexer. it's a classic example of why there needs to be no state boundries in selling/writing health insurance policies. There is tons of different laws from state to state that are causing costs to grow very rapidly.

Kaptain Said:
This thread says a lot about current health care insurance in the US, just saying, and this thread is just touching on what a million people have to deal with.

re: Need Help: Blue Cross Blue Shield

2010-05-27 21:27:36

posted by: Kaptain. This thread says a lot about current health care insurance in the US, just saying, and this thread is just touching on what a million people have to deal with.

re: Need Help: Blue Cross Blue Shield

2010-05-27 20:10:43

posted by: bobkat. You are right, Harleyyukon. BC/BS is portable from one state to the next.
Coverage any better in one state than another?   Remembering that BC?BS is a company who writes many policies of all kinds, cheap and expensive, and like most things, you get what you pay for. And some policies let you exclude things that you don't need, like maternity care for older people, and a lot of other things.
And as medical costs vary from state to sate, risk factors that the actuarials figure with can vary too, so identical policies may cost quite differently from state to state.
If an employer ops for a particular cheapie policy, that's generally what you'll get offered when you change states.  A good one, you will be better off.
So you have to take your Montana policy down and ask them the particulars about YOUR policy, changing it over, portability, etc. Never two policies or two people's situations are alike.
A lot of companies will get around the preexisting clause by putting a rider on it for a specified period of time, 90 days up to a year, and either disallowing any claims regarding this condition, or charging you extra for coverage.   Some preexisting conditions will follow you for life, some only temporarily for as little as a few months and some not at all.
And bear in mind that some things companies consider preexisting are NOT supported by present medical knowlege and should NOT be considered preexisitng at all, and you might be able to change their mind and bring them up to date if you have a physician or care giver who will go to bat for you. Takes a lot of time and effort but sometimes does pay off for the patient. Insurance company's medical advisors tend to be older people who are not as up to date as they should be and they want to work 9 to 5 and take things easy. Some can be "edicated" fairly easily, providing you can get someone to write letters and make phone calls, none of which can ever be billed by the health care provider, by the way.
The whole insurance thing is terribly compicated and confusing.  Both my wife and I've been in this business all our lives and when I get a doc or hospital bill, we have a devil of a time even trying to figure out if we owe something, what we owe or when or where to pay it!
Billions of health care dollars go into the administration and billing and the complicated things just regarding paying the bills by insurance companies.   A lot of it is very wasteful, but no one has tried to figure out a better way.

re: Need Help: Blue Cross Blue Shield

2010-05-27 17:34:00

posted by: Harleyyukon. The company I used to work for had BC BS of Illinios, they reorganized the division I worked for was closed so I did the Cobra thing for a few months then got a policy from BC BS ND, they will write you a policy even if you have preexisting conditions as long as you don't let the policy you have now laspe before getting new policy if you let it laspe then they can shut you out for preexisting conditions, you may not get exactly the same policy you had before but they will sell you some type of coverage, this was in 2007 for me but guessing still the same today