Anthem Blue Cross has decided that they are going to “discontinue” the health insurance policy that they sold me about four months ago. There is absolutely nothing I can do about it. I feel like the company lied to me, and I also feel like this is a form of “bait and switch”.
Those of you who have been following my blogging here on the Families.com Insurance blog already know about how hard I’ve struggled to find health affordable health insurance coverage. In 2009, I lost my job as a teachers aide, which meant that I lost my insurance coverage as well. I couldn’t afford to pay the money to have COBRA coverage while I was unemployed.
To make a long story short, I was completely uninsured until April of 2012. It took the help of a very knowledgable insurance broker to find a policy that I could afford. Overall, I was very happy with the ClearProtection Plus 1000 policy that I purchased. It covered things like doctors visits and hospitalization due to accident or serious illness. My hope was that I would be able to earn enough money to add dental coverage to the plan sometime soon.
In the few months that I’ve had this insurance policy, it added coverage for maternity and birth control. This was due to California state laws that required insurers to provide those types of coverage, (and not due to the generosity of the insurer). I used the policy exactly one time, to see a doctor when I had a sinus infection. The insurance coverage made the antibiotics I required much more affordable than they were when I was uninsured.
Today, I got a letter from my insurer, Anthem Blue Cross. The letter arrived August 25, 2012. It said:
“Starting July 1, 2012, the ClearProtectionPlus 1000 policy you have will not be sold to new members. We made this decision because sometimes we need to modify the range of the policies we offer”.
The letter also pointed out: “Sometimes, closing a policy to new sales can make it more expensive. Premiums must reflect the anticipated costs health insurers expect to cover.” It gave some hypothetical scenarios that could, potentially, cause the cost of my premiums to increase.
I cannot express in words appropriate for this blog how angry this situation makes me. I feel as though I was sold a product that the insurer knew was going to be discontinued in just a few months time. The phrase “bait and switch” comes to mind.
So, here are my options. I can stay with my current plan (and hope that I can afford the new, likely higher, cost of premiums). I can hope that the current plan will continue to cover what it currently does.
Or, I can switch “without having to answer health questions” to another Anthem Individual policy. There is no information on what that potential policy would cover, or what it would cost. If I decided to switch, I have to do it between September 1, 2012 and September 30, 2012. This doesn’t give me much time to explore my options.
Image by Alec Perkins on Flickr