Thread by @AlexandraErin

Oof. I've had a bit of a scary time with my insurance this year. Resolved now, but.

First, due to the mail sabotage, I didn't get my paperwork until 1/7/21. I could have figured out the online stuff without it and made payment before January 1st, but. Everything happens so much.

When I got the paperwork and set up my online access, it said my coverage was voided for non-payment and could be cancelled, but it was also asking me to make a payment to activate. So I did. First try, it gave me a confirmation number but never went through.

I didn't write the confirmation number down because I expected it to be emailed to me as well. Another silly mistake on my part. There was no email, no authorization or deduction on my bank account, and it didn't show up in my payment history.

But it was also saying everywhere that it could take up to two business days for a payment to process so I thought, okay, maybe this is normal.

On the third business day there was still nothing, and I still had the money, so I attempted payment again. This time it immediately showed an authorization on my card, the payment was "not applied" but showed in my payment history, and I got an email confirming it.

So don't know what happened the first time, but it definitely didn't go through. Whatever! It's done now, right? Well, my account is still saying coverage voided and the payment, though processed and recorded, is not applied. Whatever. It says it can take up to 2 business days.

So I'm checking it a couple times a day because 1) no health coverage during a pandemic? and 2) I can't afford right now to be out three hundred dollars for absolutely nothing, even temporarily.

Then in the course of yesterday, my account updated twice... the first time to show that my coverage was canceled on January 2nd (the day after first payment was due) and my balance owed is negative what I paid.

And... that was not great but it made sense to me. I was supposed to have paid for the coverage before January 1st, and if my policy was canceled then the balance due was zero then I'd overpaid by the amount previously due. They owed me a refund.

And that being the case it would have been great if the website had reflected "You don't have a policy with us, sorry, them's the breaks. We owe each other nothing." and not "You can activate your policy with us by paying this amount."

So I accepted that I was probably boned for medical insurance this year and kept checking back to see if I'd get a clue when they were releasing the money back to me and how, and later that day, it updated again.

Still said policy cancelled on the 2nd, but the balance due had changed from negative (they owe me money) back to positive (I owe them the full monthly premium, for some reason) and payment history empty.

At this point I don't think I'm getting out of this without having to call them again (I'd already called once between the two payment attempts and got no clarity on what was happening, just "maybe try it again"), but I decide to save that for a day I'm feeling up to it.

But then this morning I get an email saying that my bill for February is ready and due on February 1st, so... what? I sign back in and my policy is reinstated, my successful payment is back in my history, and the balance due is the same but listed for February coverage.

So as I said at the top of the thread, it's all resolved and all's well that ends well. It was just a very confusing and alarming journey to get to this point. I'm assuming that they just haven't worked through properly how various back end statuses display on their website.

Like when January 1st ends and I haven't paid the first premium to activate my coverage, it is provisionally cancelled while they wait to see if money comes in (which is good, especially in the year of presidential postal sabotage), and that flag wasn't cleared immediately.

So in the interim when they're waiting, the "Please make a payment to activate your account." status is overriding the display that my coverage has been cancelled, and then at a certain point of applying the payment, that overriding status was removed.

All of this is way more complicated than it needs to be because of our atrocious for-profit health care system and all the layers of bureaucratic obfuscation applied to try to make it look more workable than it is.

Aand I suspect that with the ACA making it harder for insurance companies to ditch accounts of more marginal profitability, they don't really see any priority in making it easier to keep your coverage and would prefer a few more people give up on maintaining it.

So that's the story of how I went two weeks into Plague Year 2 without having health insurance and not knowing for sure if I would have it for the rest of the year.

I'm not naming my carrier here because I'm not interested in antagonizing them, especially since I think on paper they'd be on rights to do what it looked for a day like they were doing and just be like, "Too late. You let your coverage lapse. That's your problem, not ours."

But anyway. That's a giant source of anxiety and mental bandwidth use that's been running through my brain for two weeks that's now gone, and that's a load off.

Now I can switch to worrying about making my premium each and every month, since this year I decided to switch from "health insurance I can't afford to use" to "health insurance I can afford to use, if I can afford to keep it". Time will tell if that was the right decision.

Yeah, I think this is likely the case.

For instance, when I got my invoice and paperwork finally on January 7th, it arrived at the same time as a second notice containing the same materials that had been mailed the following week.

https://twitter.com/WolfWings/status/1350087430490238977