Not exactly clear on the concept

[carbonel]

I need to find a new healthcare provider. So I went looking on the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Minnesota website, and found a couple of plans that looked promising. I had some questions, and wanted to talk to a real person. I had to fill in a form with my phone number (entirely reasonable) and my full address (not so much), and designate a time for someone to call me.

No one ever called. Instead, right about the correct time, I got an e-mail with no subject and no message except a long signature block, with 10 attached files totaling 6 meg, all of which (as far as I could tell) duplicated information already on the website.

I sent an e-mail response that was probably snippier than it should have been. I wonder if she'll ever call me back.

If anyone has any other recommendations for healthcare providers, I'd be happy to hear them. (That, in fact, is probably why I'm so annoyed. I suspect BCBS is pretty much the only game in town for individual healthcare outside of state-based providers.)

In other news, I'm mostly recovered from the flu, except for a hacking cough that keeps me up at night, and laryngitis.

Comments

[1crowdedhour.livejournal.com]

My condolences on having to chase down a provider. If you have good luck, I really want to hear who you end up with.

Do you have a doctor you want to keep? If so, I'd find out what plans they are with and choose one of them.

If not, you're wide open. There are at least two choices (neither exactly fabulous) besides BCBS, Preferred One and Health Partners. I've been with the former and am now with the latter. Let me know if you find others.

[naomikritzer]

HealthPartners normally sells individual plans. They have temporarily suspended sales because of some lack of clarity in the health care provisions that just went in, but this is supposed to be temporary (and they have a "temporary plan" that you can buy for immediate coverage).

Ed works for HealthPartners, and carries the family health plan, so we get ALL our care from the HealthPartners network. FWIW, I have found that they have an excellent network, and the people at the clinics try hard to provide you with excellent health care. The one time I've ever been treated really badly by a health care provide, when I called back a year later and said "any optometrist but the lady from last year, please" it turned out she'd departed some months earlier because they'd gotten similar feedback from others.

They do drive me crazy on occasion, but I think that's inherent to health care.

[1crowdedhour.livejournal.com]

This is good to know. I'm with Health Partners now.

[biblio-tech.livejournal.com]

We have BCBS with a deductible, which R will probably never exceed, and so far I have not. We've been on the plan for 1.5 years (since Cobra ran out) and it's worked well for us. In spite of not spending our deductible, we do get some of the benefits in reduced fees and medication costs. Our particular plan will pay 100% for anything after the deductible.

[davidschroth.livejournal.com]

I'm betting your response wasn't actually any snippier than it needed to be...

Sorry to hear the flu won't stay away.

We're with Health Partners, but since this isn't an individual plan, I'm not sure that's germane.