Primary versus secondary? – please help!

My wife is 25 and has always been on her parents health insurance plan through her dad’s employer. We all agreed that this year she would be added to my health insurance I get through my employer and removed from his. I added her at open enrollment and am now paying bi-weekly from my paychecks for this.

Apparently her father decided to keep her on his insurance anyway because the family plan costs the same regardless. We were not made aware of this until after open enrollment closed.

We tried to get her Vyvanse prescription filled on the new insurance and they said they required a PA from the doctor. That was completed and approved, but my health insurance is telling me the insurance through her father is primary and it needs to be run through that, resulting in the prescription being over $300, instead of $25 on my plan.

WTF. So basically we are paying for her to be covered this whole year for close to nothing? Does this sound correct? The insurance person said there’s no way to have my insurance be the primary unless she’s removed from her fathers. Does that sound right? Is it even possible to get her removed mid-year with no qualifying event? Her dad is looking into this on his end but I am extremely annoyed right now at the whole thing.

The whole reason we wanted to switch her before age 26 is because her parents are so forgetful and lose everything, it was a total pain to have them managing her medical finances, asking for documentation when we already gave it to them, switching FSA card numbers without giving her the new one, her showing up at Walgreens to have the card declined, calling them for the new number and them not answering, etc. I’m irritated that he decided to keep her on, without even discussing it with us at all. Now we have this mess.

Any ideas on if and how we can fix this?

Also, if we’re stuck with this for a year, how is primary versus secondary applied?