Insurance -- a High Maintenance Epic

February 2, 2024 Claire Sachs

I have a lot of insurance policies – homeowner, car, very valuable property for my mom’s jewelry, and of course, health insurance.? And then there’s the long-term care policy (LTC). This year, only a month into 2024, there have been so many SNAFUs that I still might lose coverage.

I have all of my insurance on autopay through my bank. I thought it would make it easier and require less attention than paying every month. That’s not really true.

Let’s start with the easier one – the dental coverage that I bought with my health plan. I only noticed when I checked my credit card at the end of January. There was no payment to the insurance company. Turns out, after three years of seamless autopay, the website said it had magically been turned off. On top of that, there was no charge for my dental coverage, nor was it listed as part of my coverage.

After about a half hour on the phone with a nice customer service agent, who insisted on figuring out what happened, we discovered that I was listed as enrolled. The computer system hadn’t put the enrollment through. I have to call back in a week and clear the first two premiums, but at least there’s a record that I was signed up on time.

OK. I can deal with that. I’m not thrilled about having to call back, but if that’s all it takes it’s not so bad.

Then there’s the LTC plan from a company that has an absolute crap record (internal policy, not their customer service agents) on how they treat their customers and fulfill their contractual obligations. I’ve been going back and forth with this company since 2018, but the latest act of this saga has an unhelpful cameo or three from USPS.

I’ll back up for a minute. I bought the policy when I was in my 20s because my then-employer offered it without me needing to fill out a medical form. I had fewer conditions back then, although I had just been diagnosed with kidney disease. I knew that there was no other way in this life or the next that I would ever get a chance to buy an LTC policy without filling out a health history form. It was an opportunity I had to take.

Fast forward 12 years – the first major premium increase. It had gone up by roughly 150%. I never got notice (ahem, USPS), so I kept paying the much lower premium, and it eventually lapsed because of underpayment. A call to the company and they allowed me to reinstate the policy.

Five years later, the same thing happened. This time it was about a 30% increase. I called the company and they let me clear the balance, but through a series of administrative missteps, they didn’t get the check. In very quick succession, they canceled the policy again, which I only found out about because they sent the next (correct) premium check back. This time, the only way I would get the policy reinstated was to fill out an Evidence of Insurability form, a.k.a. medical history.

Well. That wasn’t going to happen. So, I reached out to the Maryland Insurance Administration. I wasn’t sure there was anything they could do. But every policy administrated in a given state is regulated by the state’s insurance commissioner, and they had a whole office to investigate. Which they did. They called the company, which alerted them that there was a complaint.

No insurance company wants scrutiny from a regulatory office, so this resulted in two things happening. First, I found out that the insurance company office that was administrating the policy was in Illinois, so the Maryland office sent the case to their Midwest counterparts. Two offices were now involved.

Second, the company sent me this pissy little letter telling me they would give me one more chance without the EOI form. They got a about half of the facts of both the 2018 and 2023 cases wrong, but I didn’t care as long as they reinstated the policy. They insisted on being connected to my bank account (I had tried to do that when I bought the policy, but they wouldn’t let me), which suited me fine.

It still wasn’t over, though. They quoted me a ridiculous balance I had to pay, which it took me a while to find out included the first quarterly payment of 2024, which had gone up an additional 35% after just one year. Finally, I filled out all the necessary forms and headed to USPS to send it priority mail. It would arrive with a week to spare, with a signature requirement. This time there would be a record that they had gotten what they needed.

Except.

After having paid $14 to get the documentation there in plenty of time, USPS is currently a week late on the delivery.

I have sunk at least ten hours into chasing down what happened with the LTC policy, and a few more for the dental plan. It’s bad enough we have an extra full-time job making ourselves functional with our conditions. Do we really have to have another time-sucking obligation to hold on to the mechanisms keeping us from bankruptcy?

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