Bad Friday

For the first time, as far as I can remember, I have no health insurance. I was coasting along, automatically renewing my ACA coverage during each open enrollment and having those exorbitant premiums covered by tax credits, until I decided to check go to my insurance provider’s website (“portal” is an overly grand term for these things and should be reserved for wormholes) and check the claim status of a recent eye appointment.

Turns out the claim was denied, which sometimes happens if the provider screws up or if the insurer screws up, but what was surprising was the reason: my policy was cancelled a few months ago. Turns out I stopped getting tax credits, which I wasn’t notified about but could tell if I’d looked more carefully at my automatic renewal, and the insurer started billing me full price again, without notifying me or even sending me a bill, and then they cancelled my policy for non-payment of the first bill, again without notifying me. But I did find those invoices and cancellation on the “portal”, including the additional premiums they kept billing each month after the cancellation (make up your mind!).

The good news is that after calling the state ACA management, they reprocessed my application to get the tax credits back within a day, bad news is then they handed it off to Medicaid to check eligibility with them, and when that happened in the past they took so long that open enrollment expired and I had to go back to my old ways and get something off ehealthinsurance. So now I’m part of the walking uninsured, and if you’re shopping for health insurance, absolutely do not choose Friday Health Plans.