The Nightmare before Christmas

The Nightmare before Christmas

’Twas two nights before Christmas and all through the house
  not a person was covered, not even a mouse.

  The website was broken and when I would call
  Covered California had hold times that would stall, stall, stall.

  The list of doctors and hospitals was far from complete
  You’d have to look up each one and call them, by Pete.
                 With apologies to Tim Burton and Clement Clarke Moore

Yes. Today hold times at Covered California are 45 minutes to an hour.
If you call the number listed in their ads, you are told to HANG UP and call one of two other numbers — no reason given as to why there are two numbers, or if there are any reasons to call one over the other. BTW, you get the same message (IN ENGLISH!) when you call the SPANISH phone number. And they wonder why Spanish-speaking signups so far are practically ZERO. Geniuses!

The agent phone number isn’t working. 

Which makes sense. If you don’t have answers for the professionals you partner with, just don’t answer the phone.

So I have to call the main line and ask questions from the customers’ perspective.
Today I called in to ask whey I had to drive past 14 hospitals to get to the one 25 miles away (over an hour away in drive-time) as it is the ONLY ONE listed in my Enhanced Silver HealthNet HMO plan. The perky elf on the helpline said not to worry, not all of the hospitals are put in yet. They’re still working on it.


Then she wanted to know where I found a list of hospitals on the plan. “It doesn’t make sense that other hospitals aren’t in the plan. Just CALL each one and ask if they participate in Covered California, with the insurer name.”


I agree. It doesn’t make sense at all. The problem is... do I trust their assurances? Do I tell every client to call every doctor and hospital they want to use. BTW, many doctors offices don't know the details of all of these new plans, either. Just because they accept HealthNet HMO doesn't mean that they accept Enhanced Silver HealthNet HMO through Covered California.


AND Keep in mind this all has to happen BEFORE the deadline of December 23.


Here are some of the broken links. Interesting: NONE of the resources listed (in red) actually work.

Oops! The page you're looking for is no longer here...

Spanish, the missing language!

And, in care you are wondering, here is a list of languages at the Covered California website. Now I would typically expect that ENGLISH and ESPAÑOL would be close to one another, in importance AND alphabetically. But look at where Spanish is listed... 11th on the list. The list is so long, Spanish doesn't even show up on most computer screens without scrolling. Español (Spanish) is after Hmoob (Hmong), Korean and Russian, but before Filipino and Vietnamese. Is the list in alphabetical order? NO! In order of importance (number of California speakers)? NO! It is oddly random.

And they wonder why nobody Spanish-speaking is signing up. 

Geniuses!