SNAFU

I am in the middle of a snafu concerning our health insurance coverage. While trying to get to the bottom of things, I have discovered several other snafus. Actually, it’s a chain of people dropping the ball. The problem is I’m the person all the balls landed on and nobody wants to pick any of them back up!
Apparently, our insurance has a “six month” pre-existing condition wait. So for the first six months of our coverage, my fibromyalgia was not covered. Problem #1- employees do not get this information unless they ask for it. And we don’t know to ask for the info unless a problem arises. Even our local HR department did not know about this clause.
Since we did not know this, my doctor who was waiting for the insurance to kick in sent me to a specialist. The person who normally did these referrals and would have checked with our insurance company before doing so, was on maternity leave. The person filling in didn’t bother to check-problem#2.
Problem #3- the specialists’ office did call the insurance company before I started going there. That person was told that I was not covered. She was told that it would be better to postpone the appointment. She was given the date coverage started. But she did not pass this info along to me or to any other staff. I only know because the insurance company keeps good phone records. I have happily been paying my co-pay as requested with each visit.
And now, I owe over $2000. It has taken me a whole week and literally 30 phone calls to piece this puzzle together. I had to call multiple times because I didn’t know some of the right questions to ask until I received another puzzle piece from someone else.
I am trying to hold each person in the chain accountable for their part. They, however, have different ideas. So I’m getting the phone records from the insurance company to prove that that doctor’s office knew. I’m sharing that information with the lab that office used. I’m taking on the HR department of the huge corporation of Con-Agra to get them to automatically give out the benefits booklet to each new employee.
I’m sharing this because every step of the way I have been told- “this doesn’t come up much”, “nobody has ever asked that “, “this situation has not occurred before” and my personal favorite, “would you like a job in our office?”
I figure that they are a) lying thru their teeth or b) other people in similar circumstances just don’t do anything but complain about it- maybe they never get around to doing something or they think there is nothing they can do.
Which brings me back to the “snafu”, this term was first used as a military term- SNAFU. It means Situation Normal, All F….. Up. I think that pretty well describes the world we live in today, don’t you?
That’s the view from my side of the street, what’s yours?