Follow Up Call

Here is the fall out, I mean, follow up, on the Dental Insurance Disaster of 2010 story.

After I spent the earliest part of yesterday morning on the phone -- on hold, mind you -- I finally got a human being on the phone.  Al, the customer service representative, asks me (again) for the ID number and enrollee's date of birth.  He can't pull up our records.  He asked me to spell the name.  This time, he can find our records, but cannot access them.  So he tells me this must be an eligibility problem and that he will transfer me to that department.

Another automated preview and another call waiting que.  This time I get through to a very nice Cassandra, who thanks me for calling "Delta Care".  I tell her that I was just transferred from Delta Dental and explained what Al tried to do and what he told me was the problem.

Then she apologized and says, "Ma'am, this is Delta CARE.  We are an HMO, and not another department of Delta Dental."  You have got to be kidding me. Then she offers to transfer me back, telling me that she will find someone to speak with me about this.

So, another trip through the automated preview call waiting que, and back on hold....well, I hung up and call Genius Golfer.  I told him the grief I was having and asked him for the HR gal's name at work.  By now it was time to get kids to school.

He tells me to be sure to shoot her the email before I leave for the morning, so she can be working on it.  Dangit.

So I try to write out the problems, the frustration, the irritations.  My computer froze and before I could spell check the email and sent it, it was lost forever in cyberspace.

So again, I sit and write a less emotional email and hurriedly send it.  Then off to the school I run.

Later in the day, I came home and checked the email.  Sure enough, she was working on it.  But she couldn't get any help either, so she enlisted the help of the insurance broker who then spoke with his contact at the insurance hierarchy.  The HR gal wrote that they'd get it figured out and not to worry any more.

Back again, later yesterday, and I check the email once more.  Another email from her telling me the broker got through and found out the insurance company had entered GG's social security number wrong, that is why it didn't show that we were enrolled--the dentist's office had the CORRECT information.  The insurance company was correcting itself, and the broker would be calling our dentist's and the oral surgeon's offices to ask them to please resubmit their claims.  Then she asked me to please email her their names and phone numbers. 

But, of course!  I did that immediately and happily got off the computer.

Then the phone rings.  It is the oral surgeon's office calling to tell me that they had just received a denial of claims saying The Girl wasn't eligible on the date of service.  Oh yes.  I tell her I was just fighting with the insurance about this for the past two days, but that they assure me this will be corrected, and would she please resubmit the claim.  "Of course," she says, "This happens all the time."

No wonder the insurance agencies have such a terrible reputation, if 'this happens all the time'.  That is two days of my life I will never get back--and even that is lucky that I had some allied help in the HR gal and the broker.  How do independent enrollees get any help?!?