Reply #24: We had an all important Doctor visit

[truedelphi]

About six weeks into the COBRA period.

The doctor saw us and he and the office staff insisted that we were enrolled.

Then we went to the lab to get some ultra important tests that the Husband had to have. The lab personnel told us we were not in the system.

The supervisor told us we were not in the system.

We believed we were- after all, we had just been seen by the doctor at this facility two floors up and supposedly on the same computer system.

I insisted that we were in the system and demanded my husband receive tests. Like you are saying, from YOUR reading of the information, I had read the information packet and I believed We were within our rights. I did not yell or scream, just kept re-iterating that we had to be seen and be covered.

Security was called. Luckily the security officers were very sweet and basically took my side, but in the end, we still were escorted out of the facility.

This hospital's customer relations people said that the reason this happened is that the head of the COBRA position at my former husband's job would not EVER sign off on any one being covered until the department handling COBRA received the payment. Supposedly, there is a loop hole that says it is UP TO THE ADMINISTRATOR in all cases. And that this particular ADMINISTRATOR never signed off on anyone getting seen or covered until the lump payment was made.

So that is my experience. Whether in the end we were or were not covered, or should or shouldn't have been treated like this, I will never know. But this is only one of about forty BAD experiences we had with health care in the USA over the last twenty four months, any one of which was Michael Moore, SICKO- worthy. (When you are paying $ 900.00 a month to be covered and still have terrible health care, you really realize what crap our HC system is!)

If you are right and the hospital customers relations people are wrong, then I had (as in past tense) a lawsuit against the Former employer. But over a year has gone by, so it wouldn't do any good.