Annual insurance Nonsense

Sigh. A recap. I have mentioned this before. (Those are only the two most recent posts; I’d say there’s a yearly post on this topic.)

1. I take very a expensive MS medication. This is redundant. No such thing as a cheap MS medication.
2. I am fortunate that the manufacturer acknowledges it is outrageously expensive, and provides financial assistance for, I suppose, every human who takes their drug. (I wonder if everyone says “financial assistance” through gritted teeth.)
3. This comes in the form of paying my $4,600 deductible. With a 200 dollar a day pill I meet my deductible on January 23rd.
4. The rest of the year I go to my standard physical, gynecologist, mammogram, and so on. No big wallow in the hospital or anything.
5. Every year each health insurance company I have had tells me they have an issue with how I am getting reimbursed by the financial assistance company. I play their game. They don’t like me getting a check, I use the assistance company’s credit card. They don’t like the card, I go to electronic deposit.
6. This year they took a new dodge: they paid the full amount, including my part. So, since I didn’t pay the deductible, I can’t be reimbursed for the deductible. And the financial assistance certainly wont dole out cash every time I get antibiotics or get a UTI. Well, bad example, but you know what I mean. I’m still better off than I’d be without insurance, and I doubt I’ll even come close to meeting my deductible, BUT STILL.

When I realized what was going on, I took one trip around the phone circuit: specialty pharmacy transferred me to the insurance who transferred me to the regular pharmacy who transferred me to, yes, the specialty pharmacy.

I called my assistance coordinator, who said, “Wait until three months from now and see what they do the next time you get your meds.”

I planned to do that, all the while avoiding all doctors just out of spite, but then my brother tracked down the number for the insurance complaint line in my state.

It was the quickest pickup of any phone call, and the shortest. She said:

“Insurance companies started doing that last year. There’s no law against it. Nothing you can do. “

It was disappointing news, but I loved that she actually ANSWERED my QUESTION.

You win this round, insurance company.