Salvation Army switches my insurance right before getting approved for surgery.

I am a cashier at a Salvation Army thrift store, I've been working there for two years. Up until last November I had been part-time. I was planning on getting my own insurance (I had been uninsured for almost ten years prior) so that I could finally get some medical issues taken care of, but I learned that I could be made full time so that I would have insurance through work. I was told that it would be really good insurance.

I waited a month until mid November to be made full time, and from there it took until the beginning of March for my Blue Cross Blue Shield Anthem insurance to go into effect. I started the process with the oral surgery for jaw surgery, which up until now has involved almost two months of going back and forth with insurance to get the surgery covered.

This week I also went to a consultation for having surgery on my feet, which I've been having issues with since I was a teenager but have been in increasing pain since I started working a standing job again over the last two years. I was feeling very excited and hopeful to finally be getting this two major issues taken care of.

Then I got home yesterday and opened an envelope informing me that my insurance is being changed from Anthem BCBS to United Health Care Choice Plus, effective June 1, 2024. I immediately called the oral surgery and was told point blank that United Healthcare won't cover anything. I also found out that they would not cover surgery on my feet either.

Out of pocket the jaw surgery would cost around 16k, for my feet it would cost $5-8k per foot, so 10-16k.

I feel like my best option right now is to ask to be reduced back to part time just so that I can lose my insurance coverage and do what I was originally planning to do seven months ago and get my own health insurance through BCBS, which will obviously be super expensive on a pay of $1,000 a month (how much I made when I was part-time). I have to make a bunch of calls today and will hopefully find out that BCBS will cover at least one of the surgeries.

submitted by /u/cerg10
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