Placed on different insurance plan with COBRA?
Hey all! I looked for instances of a similar situation of what I’m going through but couldn’t find any, so apologies if this is an issue that’s been brought up before.
I was laid off from my old job at the end of August, and since I have a few medications I take along with psychiatrist visits/weekly therapy/usually being at risk for injury due to playing multiple sports, I elected to keep my workplace-provided insurance through COBRA. However, when I went to refill my prescriptions I was shocked at the price of the copays skyrocketing from what they normally are. My pharmacy explained that I hadn’t hit my deductible yet, which couldn’t have been possible since I usually reach it pretty early in the year thanks to one of my medications not having a generic version. I reached out to the healthcare provider (Anthem/Blue Cross Blue Shield) and they confirmed that I hadn’t met my deductible, but upon further examination I found that I was no longer on the same healthcare plan I had been covered by while employed (Anthem Blue Access Choice PPO); instead, I was switched to a different plan (Anthem Blue Preferred Select HSA with Copay), even though the COBRA paperwork clearly stated that I would be continuing my coverage with my original plan. You probably won’t be surprised to hear that this has led to a lot of buck-passing – Anthem blamed COBRA, COBRA blamed Anthem, etc. I’m still waiting to hear from a COBRA rep I’ve been speaking to who reached out to Anthem, but in the meantime I have a couple of questions:
Have any of you ever run into this kind of situation? I’m guessing it was an administrative error, but that doesn’t make it any less concerning especially since I’ve been trying to wade through the system with both COBRA and Anthem for a couple of weeks now.
If I refill a prescription or have a doctors’ appointment while technically covered by this new plan, is it still possible to get reimbursed for what I would have paid on the plan I’m supposed to be covered by currently? I’ve stopped going to my weekly therapy sessions and held off on refilling the one expensive Rx since I can survive about them, but obviously it’s not ideal.
Tl;dr: Went on COBRA, got placed on the wrong insurance plan with a reset deductible, COBRA and insurance companies are blaming each other. What to do?