Jamie and I finally knuckled under and decided to register on the Nevada Heath Exchange. I figured we sign up and I’d bang out a quick post about the experience. Not so fast Sports Fan.
26 NOVEMBER-
0600- Jamie jumps on to www.nevadahealthlink.com and starts the process.
0900- I wake up and see what’s up. Jamie has us all plugged in and we’re up to picking a health plan. I’ve got a couple of questions so I call the Exchange.
0920- On hold
0955- I ask the Navigator if I can add Rosie to the plan because the Court Order says I need to but she’s not on my taxes.
Me: Can you add her now?
Navigator: No. You have to start the process all over again because you’ve gone too far.
1100- Jamie did the application in her name so I started one in mine. I figure that will give us options about Rosie if and when Mom decides to talk to us. “Getting Started” is the first section and it won’t take my mailing address. It’s a PO Box and it keeps rejecting it.
1200- After an hour of taking turns trying different ways of typing PO Box, Jamie scores and it accepts our mailing address.
1300- Things have zipped along quite nicely and when I start to put in our “Financials” I notice that our physical address is wrong. I go to “My Account” and select edit. It will let me edit everything but the physical address. Stumped, I make the call.
1300 – On hold.
1344- After checking everything, the Navigator tells me she is going to switch me to someone who can manually input my address.
Tech Support: Hello, how may I help you?
Me: You need to manually change my physical address.
Tech Support: Okay. Let me verify your account.
We then go through all the account info. I tell her a couple of time that my physical address is wrong but she wants me to confirm it and I give the correction.
Tech Support: You know you have a back button right?
Me: What?
Tech Support: You need to hit the back button until you get to the address screen.
Me: You can’t just change my address?
Tech Support: No, but I can hit the back button for you while you watch.
Me. No thanks.
1425- I bang the back button until I get back to adding the address. I make the correction and press “Save and Continue”. It takes my corrections and promptly deletes the PO Box. I double check my account and the PO Box is there but it doesn’t list me physical address. To heck with it, I choose Financials and press on with pride. Nope. Back to “Getting Started” and no PO Box.
1530- After trying and failing to get out of “Getting Started” I KNOW we’re in a loop and it’s not us. I make the call.
1530- On hold.
1600- Back to the Navigator. I go through the whole story again. She checks everything and says she’ll transfer me to someone who will help me. Tech support goes through the whole thing again. He gets stuck in the Loop.
Tech Support: It seems to be stuck in a Loop.
Me: No shit? Really?
Tech Support: A Issue Report has been generated. They will fix this after midnight tonight. Call back tomorrow.
Me: Um…Okay.
1630- We give up for the day.
26 NOVEMBER
0900- On Hold.
1010- We go through the whole Spiel again.
2 DECEMBER
Took Thanksgiving off and dove back in today. Got hold of a chick named Loretta who was GREAT. No problem. She goes in and fixes the mailing address program and walks me through the next section about our “personal information. Rosie was a problem. Mom has her on her insurance. We plugged in the info we had on it and pressed “Save and Continue”. Before disconnecting with Loretta we decided to see if things were all copacetic. I log out and log in and things are looking pretty good. Ooops. Error message. Loretta can’t believe it happened. “We’ve haven’t had one of those for days.”
Yeah. Great.
8 DECEMBER
Fast forward a little bit. Suffice to say the error message is still there while I try to edit Rosie’s info under the “Review” section. But today is a little different. I called their help line at 855-768-5465.
It’s disconnected.
14 days into this hostage crises and we’re working without a net since we lost our insurance on the first.
9 DECEMBER
Phone number works today. On hold for an hour. When I got someone on the line they were unaware that their phone number wasn’t working yesterday. “Maybe it had too many callers?”, she offered. Today the error popped up when we went to “find a plan”. The navigator suggested we pick a plan blind and have her put it in our cart. I want one more look at the Bronze Plan because I’ve been getting feedback that it’s shitty. Huge copays and deductibles. Oh yeah, have to get a separate vision plan.
16 DECEMBER
I originally wanted to finish this post with a health plan tucked under my arm. The Hostage Crisis continues with no end in sight. So I’ll wrap this up by saying…
We have been finally ready to buy a plan since last week but an error on the website prevents that Happy Ending.
Stay tuned loyal readers, I’ll be updating as things play out.
I keep getting an error button, or told I don’t exsist.
Health Link is back up. Been trying to sign on since 0800. It allowed me to sign on at 1034. Yay me. And…..got an error again!
BONUS POINTS- (855) 768-5465 is not taking calls.
Praise God! I just got through to an agent/broker. Sean answered all my questions and we’ve got a plan and by the end of the week Hell or High water we will be covered.
HINT OF THE DAY: Try the NHL website between 0900 and 0930 or really, really late at night and the error messages don’t happen. We’ll try tomorrow morning and report back. Stay tuned Loyal Readers.
The Last Day to sign up and get payment in the mail. Website let me get one page into “Searching for a Plan” before crashing. Calling doesn’t work because their number crashed again.
Tried the link just now. Nope. Won’t let us search for a plan. We MAILED a money order to them that we THINK is the premium. I used a third party link that generated a plan and a premium in FOUR clicks of the mouse.
Go Here:
http://www.valuepenguin.com/ppaca/exchanges/nv
Oh great. Called NHL and the “Billing Department” doesn’t have access to Billing to see if our payment was received. “We’re just a call center”, she said. Fortunately I have a signed USPS called confirmed it’s delivery. I asked for a number to call to talk to the folks that deposited my money but they don’t have a phone.
Today’s weirdness. The Link works on Jamie’s computer but not mine. She started from scratch had enrolled again and got as far a PAYING FOR A PLAN before the site…..crashed. We also got letters in the mail saying we have until the 30th of December to enroll for January coverage. That’s just swell because it’s the 31st. Whoops. Called the NHL. Approximate wait time is 86 minutes.
This is getting insane! The Exchange has no vision insurance; so I enrolled with VSP for the vision ins. We received the packet with our id cards and the insurance is good effective Jan 1! It was a lot easier to sign up for vision insurance than medical insurance! Walt and I can’t wait till we get jobs and get insurance through our employer!
Starting the week with a case number. A supervisor was supposed to call me last week. That didn’t happen. Called and talked to the person who issued the case number. She said she’d call back. Nope. $213.79 still missing.
Finally got an email of substance from NHL Quality Assurance. They say they “have been buried with requests”. No shit.
Day 69 of the hostage crisis. Got through to the NHL and the fairly bored lady who answered the phone after a mere 49 minutes on hold informed us that IF the NHL fixes issues on the site that produce the errors we’ve had there is no way to fix EXISTING accounts and you have to reapply all over again. I hardly ever get to use the word “asinine” but this is asinine. If Amazon.com gets an error do you have to get a new account? No. Does Gmail work like that? No. Washington Mutual got sued over this kind of shit. NHL apparently has no way of accessing the system directly to make changes. Their only answer is that YOU have to start all over again. One the phone line there is also a cute little ditty apologizing for screwing up the payments of existing account and that date to lose coverage wasn’t real. They thank you for your patience. Really? What fucking patience? I want to know where my money went and they haven’t got a clue. Their finance depart has been on it since the 12th of January and there is no phone number to call so I can help them sort things out. My not-very-helpful customer service rep thanked me today for explaining to her how NHL works. I should work there. Jamie is reapplying for the fourth time. Wish us Luck.
Jon Hager, the Director of the Nevada Health Link resigned today. Wonder if he gets to keep his health care. He told the board he’s leaving to “pursue other opportunities”. Joe Ismay said the same thing as he stepped into the lifeboat.
Today was a red letter day. The Nevada Health Link called me. From Texas. I very nice lady said that my case has been researched and they couldn’t find where my payment of $278.13 was. But…if I sent them a copy of my money order receipt they would sent me a refund check. We have given up on the NHL and have been trying to sign up for Medicare as recommended by the NHL. Medicare is FREE. If you don’t live in Clark or Washoe counties. You know, where most Nevadans live. Great.
Medicare? Are you sure that you don’t mean Medicaid?
Nope, Medicare. The nice folks at NHL said we might qualify any way, so we’re pushing ahead tomorrow.
Yeah it was Medicaid. As of today I had to reapply to the NHL. That only took five hours and only one error message. But BEHOLD! I AM qualified for Medicaid and if they approve me, I have health coverage for $21.99 a month.
That last comment was in April. Never did get anything back until Jamie was disqualified because I don’t exist. We had a “Hearing Phone Conference”. Apparently I was disqualified for not submitting a form I was never sent. I had to prove to Medicaid that my unemployment checks stopped. Now….today. Guess what? We had to re-enroll at the Nevada health Link. Here we go again.
Got a call the other day from the NHL. They were “clearing cases” and wanted my ADDRESS to send me the $278.13 they owed me. I said, “No thank you, you’ve already sent us a check.” Hmmmm?
Lost our heath care today because we make a whopping $1900 a month. He we go again.