Followup on the Healthy Uninsurable Patient

As a quick follow up to The Healthy Uninsurable Patient, a few weeks after the blog was posted my daughter received her COBRA (Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act) papers. By this time she had obtained individual health insurance with a high deductible, but a reasonable cost. The COBRA quote came in at $569.04 per month. This is, by the way, more than I pay for my family plan that covered four people. This is also more than she makes in a month. How many 26 year olds can afford $569.04 monthly for health insurance? Of course I have a cadillac plan as an employed physician at a hospital but there are no other options offered. There is not even any information on how she might obtain other coverage included with the papers.

As a side note, it turns out that she was covered by my insurance when she had the CT scan done. Despite the fact that the letter received from Humana stated that her insurance would terminate when she turned 26, she actually was covered until the end of her birth month. She is a post-graduate student and I'm a doctor who deals with insurance issues every day and we still got it wrong. No one at the hospital where she had the tests, including the financial aid people, realized she was still covered. And this is where I work!!! Nor did the upper management in my office or the office staff at the surgeon's office understand that she had continued coverage until June 30 (and the surgeon is employed by the same hospital I am).

Of course payment for the scans will be denied because pre-authorization was not obtained for them and we will have to appeal and cross our fingers. What a mess.

When she saw the premium amount on the COBRA papers my daughter asked, "How can they send this stuff out with a straight face?" Of course we don't know that they do, since we don't know the people at Ceridian in Florida who mailed the papers. More surprising to me is the number of patients in my office who keep a straight face when they say "But there is nothing wrong with our healthcare system. It's the best in the world!" No. It's not.