I had a frightening experience with Blue Cross over the weekend. If you have any chronic medical conditions, please read my experience.
On Saturday March 1st, I was planning to pay my bills including my Blue Cross bill. I am self employed and I pay $520.80 per month for my insurance or over $6000 per year. Before writing the check, I looked at the 2nd letter from Blue Cross that I received that day, March 1st. As of March 1st, a Saturday, when Blue Cross is closed until Monday morning, I was notified that my insurance was cancelled for my past due bill.. They even ended with "we hope our services were satisfactory." The insured must always pay for the month in advance. When I looked at my last payment from January for the month of Feb., I saw that I had made a mistake. I had forgot to add the 80 cents on my last check and that was the only delinquent amount. Over 4 years I paid $25,000 to them and only had one charge, a screening for colon cancer. My older brother is dying of this cancer because of the terrible managed care insurance and pathetic medical care at a doofus hospital in central PA. Those bastards at blue cross challenged my colonoscopy 2 years after the fact. I had to handle that by telling them to have their lawyer call me and I recited the testing practise as determined by THE MEDICAL COMMUNITY. They dropped that attempt, started after 2 years, and that test was my only cost to those bastards at Blue Cross. It turns out they would have dropped me within a maximum of 15 days but had not. After a very careful weekend, I realized those bastards had not dropped me because I'm in good health. I think the term "cash cow" is appropriate. Had I had what the bastards call a pre-existing or chronic disease, those bastards would have dropped me at 12:01 AM Saturday morning for my 80 cent error with no prior warning. (The bill which added the 80 cents said nothing about dropping me.) I know over half of America is terrified about a "health system" ridiculed in the civilized world. Sorry to add to that. But please be careful if you have any health problems at all. Insurance companies are among the wealthiest corporations and they have attained those riches by hurting and killing people in their time of need. Glenn
