As of January 12, 2016, I cannot recommend any individual or family enroll in a Blue Shield of California health plan either directly with them or through Covered California. As an insurance agent I have been dealing with Blue Shield’s nightmare enrollment, eligibility, and billing fiasco for over three weeks.
I have one family that enrolled online on December 14, 2015, and as of January 12, only one of the five household members had a member ID. And that is after the initial health insurance premium of over $2,000 for the family was made at the time the application was submitted. Instead of one household application, Blue Shield created five separate applications with no hope of combining them for a family plan enrollment. I’ve suggested to this particular family that they enroll with different carrier for February.
Blue Shield makes Covered California look like a well-oiled machine and that is hard to do. Whoever runs the IT Department at Blue Shield should be fired. Whoever runs the billing department should be fired. Whoever runs the enrollment and eligibility department should be fired. Those department managers are making their employees, agents, and prospective members absolutely miserable because of their incompetence. (Blue Shield small group, Medicare Advantage, and Medicare Supplements seem to have no problems. It is just the individual and family plans that are a complete mess.)
I’ve spent hours on the phone trying to resolve their stupid, stupid, stupid mistakes. No one has any power to correct the situation. They all just pass the buck around while families must go to doctor appointments with no health insurance. And the whole situation is on track for this one family to receive all their member ID numbers five to six weeks after they applied. This means they have to fill out reams of claim forms just to get reimbursed for the Blue Shield incompetence. At least if the family would have gone through Covered California they would have had health insurance by now.
I virtually want to puke every time I call Blue Shield broker telephone number because I have to listen to the recorded message about how agents can earn bonuses for enrolling new members. What? Unless I’m selling health insurance to terrorists, why would I wish such a nightmare on a client? Unless you need to enroll in Blue Shield because they are the only health plan that has your doctors or covers a specific drug, don’t purchase a Blue Shield of California health plan.
Blue Shield has been dealing with a crappy online application and utterly stupid billing system for the last two years. I’m done wasting my time. The commissions aren’t big enough for me to spend 30 hours on the phone trying to figure out how they screwed up another application. The frustration and anger I hear from my clients is more than I can deal with. Blue Shield owes California individuals and families who they have put through hell an apology.
Blue Shield bumbling billing rolls into 2016
Blue Shield’s billing mess of 2015