I worked with an agent to select a private insurance company. I ended up going with Molina Healthcare.
It has been catastrophically ridiculous. When my Republican parents ask me how my experience with Obamacare has been, I have to lie, it's been so bad.
Below the fold.
I was really busy with a project in the first few months of the year, but eventually, I got around to setting up an appointment with my PCP. The first thing that was weird was that every time I logged in to the Molina website, it showed a different PCP.
But I had gotten an insurance card in the mail, with a doctor's name on it. When I checked the doctor out, I discovered that the location was unacceptable. I live in central LA and am without a car. I needed someone in my neighborhood, downtown Hollywood, preferably that I could walk to.
So I did some research on the doctors available to me. Most of the ones nearby seemed to have very negative reviews online. But I found one that looked ok, in West Hollywood, an acceptable bus ride away, and requested that I be reassigned to her. Molina agreed, but said it would not be effective until the first of the following month.
Some weeks go by, and I get an ear infection. I call my new PCP, and they tell me that they don't take Molina Marketplace (the subsidized Obamacare plan), only Molina Medicaid. So I call Molina and raise hell about the fact that they have assigned me to someone who doesn't take Molina. A "system error". They reassign me to a doctor who DEFINITELY takes Molina Marketplace near my area. I look up his reviews. I vaguely remember him from my previous search and feel sure I ruled him out because of negative reviews, which now seem to have been somehow scrubbed. But I decide to just give him a try, because of his proximity. They tell me the change will not be complete until August 1, today.
They told me I could go to an urgent care clinic for my ear infection, but the closest one was in West LA, which was unacceptable. So they gave me an authorization to go to an ER.
I go to the ER, and the intake people take my insurance card and get on the phone with Molina. Molina tells them I have to pay $75 co-pay for my ER visit. I pay up.
I then file a complaint with Molina, saying that it is their fault that I had to go to the ER, and they should cover the co-pay.
Today, I get a call from the person at Molina investigating my complaint. She wants to know why I went to the ER, even though I told the person who took my complaint that I had an authorization to go to the ER.
She tells me that she called my new doctor's office to make sure that they indeed take Molina Marketplace, and lo and behold, they DON'T!
So now, August 1, I STILL don't have a doctor I can go to.
I hope that this is an isolated instance of the incompetence of a single company, and not a systematic problem, such as that doctors are not wanting to be included on the panels of subsidized Obamacare plans.