Hi people,
I’m dealing with some nightmarish health insurance issues that could financially ruin me, and was really hoping to get some advice here of steps I could potentially take to fix it.
Location: Colorado
I'm going to detail the scenario below:
- I'm employed with employer “A” and insured through our United Health Care insurance
- My wife worked employer “B” and is also insured through my “A” UHC insurance
- My wife also has a Kaiser Insurance policy for free from her employer that we do not use because the benefits and deductible are terrible, which is the reason why I added her to my plan
- I selected UHC to be the primary insurance for my wife during election time but we did not cancel or make changes to her Kaiser as we were told that it was free for us
During the coverage period, my wife has been to the doctors several times and always used UHC. United contacted us and asked about who the primary insurance is and we stated that it was UHC since it is exclusively what we are using.
Now we are starting to get phone calls from doctors and notices stating that UHC asked the doctors to return money to them for claims as there is the other insurance coverage. We have already paid all the out of pocket expenses (deductible) to UHC.
All the doctors that my wife went to are not Kaiser doctors (Note here that for Kaiser you need to use specific Kaiser doctors and usually get referrals), but UHC network doctors - however UHC is asking us to submit all claims to Kaiser which Kaiser is going to reject since we didn't go through them.
I'm pretty rattled by this as I figured that when I pay the insurance premium and fully ensure my wife that these things are covered but now it sounds like that in the very best case scenario I'm at least responsible for the Kaiser $6,000 deductible or worst case for all health care expenses over the past 2 years which I estimate to be over $120,000, either way, this is a massive financial burden for us I was trying to eliminate by having insurance in the first place - I'm shocked that this can happen since insurance is supposed to cover these things.
I hope that one of you can help me out with the next steps to take for this. I'm a European national living in the US and don't fully understand how this system works as they are so vastly different from what I'm used to.
Thank you in advance!
I’m dealing with some nightmarish health insurance issues that could financially ruin me, and was really hoping to get some advice here of steps I could potentially take to fix it.
Location: Colorado
I'm going to detail the scenario below:
- I'm employed with employer “A” and insured through our United Health Care insurance
- My wife worked employer “B” and is also insured through my “A” UHC insurance
- My wife also has a Kaiser Insurance policy for free from her employer that we do not use because the benefits and deductible are terrible, which is the reason why I added her to my plan
- I selected UHC to be the primary insurance for my wife during election time but we did not cancel or make changes to her Kaiser as we were told that it was free for us
During the coverage period, my wife has been to the doctors several times and always used UHC. United contacted us and asked about who the primary insurance is and we stated that it was UHC since it is exclusively what we are using.
Now we are starting to get phone calls from doctors and notices stating that UHC asked the doctors to return money to them for claims as there is the other insurance coverage. We have already paid all the out of pocket expenses (deductible) to UHC.
All the doctors that my wife went to are not Kaiser doctors (Note here that for Kaiser you need to use specific Kaiser doctors and usually get referrals), but UHC network doctors - however UHC is asking us to submit all claims to Kaiser which Kaiser is going to reject since we didn't go through them.
I'm pretty rattled by this as I figured that when I pay the insurance premium and fully ensure my wife that these things are covered but now it sounds like that in the very best case scenario I'm at least responsible for the Kaiser $6,000 deductible or worst case for all health care expenses over the past 2 years which I estimate to be over $120,000, either way, this is a massive financial burden for us I was trying to eliminate by having insurance in the first place - I'm shocked that this can happen since insurance is supposed to cover these things.
I hope that one of you can help me out with the next steps to take for this. I'm a European national living in the US and don't fully understand how this system works as they are so vastly different from what I'm used to.
Thank you in advance!