Insurance woes

So last Wednesday I stayed home from work to bring Evie to the doctor's for her facial rash. Her appt. wasn't until 4pm but I got a call in the morning from the hospital to let me know that they were having problems with her insurance and it didn't look like she was on our policy.

What?

I called JD and he went to his HR people and lo and behold, even though he had used their automated system to add her to our policy somehow it had not gone through and she has been uninsured all this time. Not only that but the time period when we could have fixed the issue ended the last day of Feb and it was now March 3rd.

They basically told JD there was nothing they could do and we were going to have to get other insurance for Evelyn, keep it for a month, and then we could switch onto the work policy since it would be considered a status change at that time.

Oh my God.

So their automated system screwed up, and they didn't bother to call even though they KNEW JD had a new baby and they KNEW the baby was not on the plan, now WE were going to have to pay out of pocket for the visits she had already had (immunizations) and we were going to have to jump through hoops to get insurance for a single month and pay out of pocket for that insurance.

And there was nothing they could do. Rat. Bastards.

Since my HR people are warm, kind, REAL human beings I went to them to ask for advice. Not only did they give me advice, they let me switch the whole family onto my company's insurance retroactive to Jan. 1st. the only thing they needed was a letter from JD's company stating that Evelyn was not insured. No problem right?

JD asked for this from his HR department and got back this response: "Since Evelyn was never on your coverage we cannot send anything specifically saying she is not on coverage."

I would post the entire email for posterity but I don't want to get sued. And getting sued is a distinct possibility because they put a freaking [TM] after the name of their HR department. Now there is a human touch for you.

I was pretty calm until this point and then I kind of lost it. I even tried calling the HR department but they wouldn't let me through the phone system without a password. That made me even madder but in retrospect it was probably a good thing.

After much rigmarole we got something my HR department could use and we said SEE YA to JD's insurance. The only good thing they did for us was agree to drop us all. I was half afraid they would make us continue to pay until the next enrollment period. Knock-on-wood that they won't still try.

Actually I shouldn't say that we are dropping the insurance because my company actually gets insurance from the same provider and when I called the PROVIDER they were very helpful and very horrified that we were going through all of this. What we are dropping is JD's useless benefits HR people who apparently could care less that a three month old baby has no insurance due to their sucky automated forms and basic incompetence.

So. It has been an extremely angry few days and now I am totally exhausted. I don't do angry well. But at least I can sleep tonight knowing that Evie is now covered by health insurance and she has a new appt for Wednesday to deal with her rash, eczema, or whatever is making her face so red and itchy.