Saturday, March 1, 2014

COVERED CALIFORNIA BOTCHS PROVIDER DIRECTORIES

Peter Lee, head of the Covered Califonria Health Benefit Exchange announced the removal of it’s provider directories on the Covered California website, effective immediately.

Prospective enrollees will now have to coordinate the insurer, the plan, and the providers by going to the insurer web site directly, ie Blue Shield, Healthnet, Kaiser, Anthem, and others.  

This was necessary due to the massive errors in listings of providers who have not been contacted, nor enrolled in the Covered California program. Many patients called the listed providers to find out their provider had not enrolled, and were listed in error. Covered California copied the provider lists for each insurer participating in Covered California.

This is merely the top of the iceberg and we head further into the Affordable Care Act. Many more ‘surprises’ will surface as patients and providers begin using this system.

Nancy Pelosi was correct. We won’t know what is in the Affordable Care Act until it is passed.

Apparently the ‘Amazon” shopping cart model is a FAIL.  

It becomes extremely obvious there was little if any congressional oversight in planning and implementing the workings of the exchanges despite several years of forewarning.

Despite Obama’s promises of ‘if you like your doctor, your hospital”…….etc that may not be the case without much head scratching, or even not at all if your doctor has not signed up for the health benefit exchange roster.  And many have not enrolled as providers, taking a wait and see attitude how well it is going to work. It will take at least one year for an assessment of each plan by individual providers.

You see it’s no longer about the patient which really  exasperates most of  us who are licensed and given the responsibility with diminishing authority to care for our patients.  

Ignoring these problems will not improve  health care delivery. Why was the insurance industry not consulted on the process of enrollment and the administrative process ?

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