The power of social media and its role regarding health insurance has blown my mind.
What emails and countless hours on the phone with multiple people could not accomplish has been fixed by Twitter. One tweet calling out Covered California and Blue Shield of California about a problem with the termination date of my policy and my issue has been resolved.
On Sept. 1, my health insurance officially changed to Medicare from Covered California Blue Shield, my state’s marketplace insurance. I have been stressing over this switch for a few months now and I have done everything in my power to ensure a smooth transition: making sure I have enough of my Lynparza (olaparib) on hand until I can get a refill, canceling the old plan and updating my new insurance information.
Alas, nothing is ever simple when it comes to health care and insurance. More specifically, nothing about living with metastatic breast cancer for over eight years has been simple.
My first mistake was waiting until the day my new Medicare policy took effect to call and cancel my old policy. Apparently, my commonsense approach in waiting until the new coverage began to cancel my previous policy is not how it’s done. Silly me. But in my mind, I can’t risk any lapse in coverage when living with cancer.
I started with a call to Blue Shield to cancel the policy only to be told I needed to cancel through the marketplace. So my next call was to Covered California. The person who I spoke with at Covered California informed me I was supposed to give them two weeks’ notice prior to canceling; I had waited too long and now they couldn’t terminate my plan until Sept. 30.
That seemed fine until I received a bill from Blue Shield
