The Obamacare woes continue as an Oklahoma man spent three agonizing months trying to cancel his health insurance plan.
David Emanuel’s 65th birthday last April, when he became eligible for Medicare, spurred him to cancel his private health insurance plan. He called BlueCross BlueShield to terminate the plan and was met with resistance.
"They said, ‘You can’t do anything until healthcare.gov tells us that you can drop it,'" he said.
He phoned healthcare.gov, but no one answered. Emanuel showed KJRH-OK the call logs displaying how long he waited to speak to a representative from the health care exchange. The call logs show that Emanuel waited 131 minutes one time and 126 minutes another time.
BlueCross BlueShield then terminated his wife’s health insurance. "I paid the premiums for our joint policy – even though I wasn’t supposed to- and then I paid the premiums for my wife’s new policy," Emanuel explained.
It took healthcare.gov three months to notify BlueCross BlueShield that Emanuel is covered by Medicare. They told Emanuel that he should have called before his birthday, instead of after. "They actually know how old you are because you’ve given them your date of birth," Emanuel said.
"Getting older is not so bad, but it gets old dealing with healthcare bureaucracy," he said, clearly frustrated.