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    Insurance woes

    I've been officially unemployed for about 6 weeks now. The only paperwork my employer was sending in the mail for the past 6 weeks was where I needed to mail my insurance premiums to in order to avoid cancellation. I've kept all the letters that state that I was still insured at certain dates (basically through February).

    Then today I get my cobra info in the mail stating that basically, if I don't pay for it, my insurance officially ended in the middle of January. That's certainly not what all the papers they've mailed me the past month have said. I've come to realize that even though I became unemployed mid January, they never actually pushed the paperwork through until maybe last week or so.

    So now I've been using my insurance for dr visits, the very expensive Avonex, and my blood work that comes along with Avonex (even though I wanted Copaxone but the insurance company declined it, saying I had to try an interferon first), and now I find out that the only way I'm not going to get hit with these outrageous bills for everything I've used it for is if I pay for cobra that's backdated two months! That is an extra $1200 on top of continuing current coverage, and I had no idea because they waited until now to do anything!

    Any other place I've worked at (or heard other people worked at) has stopped coverage at the end of the month. Unfortunately for me, I find out 6 weeks after my coverage stopped that this isn't the case for me this time around. I've got multiple letters stating that my coverage was still in effect after the fact, and the last payment I mailed in they sent back, saying they had already received the funds before I sent in the check. It never said anything about me being ineligible for the benefit, only that they had already received the premium (which I knew was impossible, but still, that's what the letter stated).

    I've never worked for a company so disorganized who refused to take care of business like this before. I was just wondering though, since they've sent me multiple letters stating that I still had coverage (until the cobra letter I got today stating that it ended mid January), do I have any recourse? It's not my fault they waited 6 weeks before acknowledging that I was no longer an employee there. Any other company with HR that has half a brain (and any kind of work ethic) would have pushed the paperwork through immediately to avoid this mess.
    Diagnosed 1/4/13
    Avonex 1/25/13-11/14, Gilenya 1/22/15

    #2
    COBRA is pretty strictly regulated and based on what you received from your Employer?, Insurer?, it sounds like you should call your state Commissioner of Insurance for info about a possible favorable resolution or to file a compliant.

    My employer/insurer deducted health insurance premiums from my final pay checks. Three weeks later after neuro, mri and other cost were pre-authorized and performed, the payroll department refunded my final health premium payment to me in a convoluted adjustment in severence payment.

    That resulted in expensive doc's, MRIs and many test eventually being billed to me 100%. It was 'illegal' to refund the premium and reverse the pre-authorization, but I was just too sick to fight that battle at the time. My employer/insurer was a major blues affiliate making those kinds of violations.

    Best of luck in your battle and let us know how things work out for you with the insurance commissioner.

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