Today, I got a bit more aggressive. It’s almost certain now that I’m moving to North Carolina and have to sort out my health care options fairly quickly.<\/p>\n
North Carolina has only two insurance companies that are active in the Federal Exchange pool (since NC decided not to have a state run exchange). Those two providers are Blue Cross \/ Blue Shield that was selected by the OPM, and ConventryOne.<\/p>\n
CoventryOne’s web site, if you type in my new home’s zip code immediately comes up (without even hitting the enter key) and says “Sorry, we can’t give you a quote online, please call our 800 number”. So today, I did call the number to demand my insurance quote for 2014. The nice woman I talked with actually works from Illinois. She pretty quickly admitted that Coventry has not yet decided on what the plans and premiums will be – she’ll take my necessary information (zip code, age, smoker, name, phone #, email address) and in a week or two send me information on the quotes once they are finalized.<\/p>\n
So knowing there were only 2 companies, and one had not yet given any information to the Feds to put onto Healthcare.gov, I called the Healthcare.gov 800 number (800-F1U-CKYO) to speak with a navigator. This time, I pushed him that I wanted a quote even if the web site wasn’t working. After he asked my zip code, he realized I was in North Carolina [Actually, I was using the web site to get a quote for IL], he declared that Oh, North Carolina is a problem. Nobody has been able to get a quote. The best I can do is take your information, and then you’ll get quote information sent to you in 3 to 4 weeks via postal mail<\/u><\/p>\n
Now that’s a quite a difference from the PR folks from HHS still saying you can get onto Healthcare.gov and get quotes right away!<\/p>\n
(note that states running their own exchanges like California don’t rely on Healthcare.gov)<\/p>\n
So the truth is there now for anyone to find. There are no quotes available on the Federal Exchange. There is no cheeze at the end of the maze, and probably won’t be until December, or at least until the threat of a one year delay goes away.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Today, I got a bit more aggressive. It’s almost certain now that I’m moving to North Carolina and have to sort out my health care options fairly quickly. North Carolina has only two insurance companies that are active in the … Continue reading