Currently my mother is in the hospital and has been there almost straight through since 12/1/11, has had numerous bypass procedures culminating in a lower leg amputation on 1/10/12 and followed with a heart attack on 1/13/12. My father suffers from seizures and had one so serious in late August that he ended up in a coma for three weeks and is currently moderately mentally and physically disabled. He cannot be left alone and myself and my siblings are doing our best to advocate for them and make sure dad is in one of our care at all times. We all have families and jobs (I have 3 kids under 6 and a full time job) and cannot believe how helpless we feel right now. My mother and father both have health insurance through NetBenefits which is part of the Fidelity Group that administers health insurance plans for Texas Instruments (where my mother worked for many years – and took an early retirement package from). In Oct 2011 my mother turned 65 and I worked with her to transition her onto a plan offered through NetBenefits that would subsidize her Medicare and coordinate all of the benefits. This was the Secure Horizons United Healthcare plan. Essentially, TI was allowing her to stay on a plan that they offered and she would have to pay the full premium. They would also let my father stay on her insurance but because he was not eligible for Medicare he stayed on the prior plan they both had through cobra and this was BCBS of New England HMO.   Because my mom was now on Medicare they were on different plans both being administered through Netbenefits and all was well. Open enrollment for the next year was in December and my mother received things from United Healthcare saying that the name was changing and they sent her new cards. She then spent most of the month in the hospital. On the Netbenefits website that I access periodically I saw that they were changing the plan name and the premium was going up slightly. Nowhere did I see anything that said that they were losing coverage.   On January 13 th I went to the website to see what my father’s insurance card number was as I needed it to book him a very important doctors appointment and the website said they had no coverage. That evening I called the NetBenefits center and had my father authorize me to speak with them on the phone and Sharon kept telling me that they no longer had coverage – but that she didn’t know why but that she could get them onto a high deductible plan so they at least had something.   She could not answer any of my questions like:   Why did my mom get new cards from UHC? Why did they automatically deduct the whole premium from her bank account if they did not actually have coverage? Why did they drop both of my parents if there was a hypothetical specific issue with just my mom? Why do I have a document from UHC instructing them to do nothing as it seemed to be a passive enrollment?   Eventually – After 2 hours Sharon came back and said she put another set of eyes on the case and they discovered it was a system error (which I actually believe is the case) and they would clear it up and not to worry. She then called last night and left a message saying the situation had been resolved but didn’t leave any details. I had my sister call her this morning because she was with my dad who could verbally authorize them to speak with her – and they told her that because my mother has Medicare Part D she is no longer eligible for this insurance. That makes no sense to me – and they kept telling my sister that my father was also on Part D but my father is only 64 so that is completely incorrect. I also had a manager tell me on Tuesday that I needed to have a copy of a Power of Attorney notarized on top of the notary the lawyer did. Obviously – that is not possible – but an example ofthe level of incompetence I am dealing with.   Currently, as it stands they have a PoA that was signed for this morning in their office but still they will not talk with me because they claim it takes 4 weeks to process. They are continuing to put us into a revolving door of “I don’t know – let me have a resolution specialist call you back in 3-5 days” and it is currently jeopardizing my parents health. Honestly, I administer health insurance plans at my work and this has been the least informed group of people that I have ever dealt with on this level. They all just read from scripts and put you on hold and no one can actually answer your questions. If I were a senior citizen that had to deal with this I would just purchase whatever high priced plan they were trying to sell – just out of fear. It is completely unacceptable and negligent as far as I am concerned.   I am not sure there is actually anything anyone here can do – but my gut is that something shady and/or incredibly negligent is going on here it seemed appropriate to reach out to AARP because I am desperate, at my wits end and have no idea what else to do.   The NetBenefits customer service number is 888 – 660-1411  
Posted by alitaido