Monday, October 21, 2013

Remember that in the Exchanges Blue Shield does Not Mean The Blue Shield You think It Does

Nor does Health Net mean Health Net and so on and so forth.  

Nor can you or your doctor's office even tell you if they are or are not in the Exchange plans.  

This is from Fabrizio Costantini for The New York Times:

... Since the new health insurance exchanges opened for business on Oct. 1, millions of people who have visited the online sites have been unable to enroll because of technical problems and software glitches. But many people who are getting through the log-in process are encountering a different set of problems when they try to determine whether policies sold through the exchanges will provide the doctors, hospitals or drugs they need.

Most of the 15 exchanges run by states and the District of Columbia do not have provider directories or search tools on their Web sites — at least not yet — so customers cannot easily check which doctors and hospitals are included in a particular plan’s network. Most allow customers to search for providers by linking to the insurers’ Web sites, but the information is not always accurate or easy to navigate, health care experts say.

At this stage, even many doctors are uncertain about whether they are contracted with exchange plans from state to state because the plans — and even some of the insurers — are so new....