Well, Covered California has been a nightmare to work with from day one. Every time we call a customer service representative we seem to get a different answer, and rarely is it correct. Here are just some of the issues we deal with on a daily basis over at Schulte Insurance so you can get an idea of what goes on “behind the scenes.” No matter how competent our team is, we have to deal with a lot of incompetence over there:

Moving customers to Medi-Cal who should not be on Medi-Cal and then cancelling their in force health insurance policy

Canceling a client’s insurance as never effective when requesting a future termination date

Cancelling a client’s insurance the day of request when the consumer really wants a future termination date

Telling a client they are ineligible for Covered California and transferring them over to Medi-Cal, yet then the client goes to Medi-Cal and finding out they are not in fact eligible for Medi-Cal

Not sending changes over to the insurance companies correctly

Sending incorrect information over to the insurance companies (address changes, dependent changes, subsidy information etc)

Leaving 2014 health insurance policies in effect plus their new 2015 health insurance policy giving a client 2 policies with the same insurance company. The insurance companies cannot fix this until they get the correct “feed” over from Covered CA.

Not cancelling a customer’s old health insurance policy when they decide to change to a new insurance company

Not enrolling an employee in a SHOP (Small group) plan for 4 months after the application is received – meanwhile, thousands of dollars of medical claims have been paid out by the client

Listing the incorrect agent on an application so that we cannot fix our clients problems as we are not showing “agent of record”

The list goes on…and on…and on…

While getting a tax credit can be a great thing, just be prepared for many issues if you decide to enroll. We really hope these issues will clean up in the near future – but what most of you are not seeing behind the scenes is a big, big mess that we are trying our best to work through.

What kind of issues have you had with your Covered California policy? We really hope Covered California gets their act together and gets their full staff properly trained soon, so that these issues stop happening.