David Emanuel recently figured out dropping Obamacare may be more difficult than originally signing up, if you can believe that.
The Oklahoma man, who turned 65 in April, had planned to terminate his insurance with BlueCross BlueShield. His new age gave him eligibility for Medicare. Emanuel had previously signed up for his insurance plan through an Obamacare exchange.
It seemed like a simple plan, but as with anything connected with Obamacare, it was anything but.
After calling BlueCross BlueShield to cancel the plan, he was directed to contact Healthcare.gov.
Emanuel said the insurance company told him that “you can’t do anything until Healthcare.gov tells us that you can drop (the plan).”
He made a number of calls to Healthcare.gov, and was often put on hold for long periods of time.
In an interview with KJRH-OK, Emanuel showed multiple logs of phone calls with Healthcare.gov that last over two hours.
“I’m glad there wasn’t a tape recorder. I said a few bad words,” he joked.
After three months, Healthcare.gov finally told BlueCross BlueShield that Emanuel is indeed covered by Medicare. Now retired, Emanuel joked that dealing with Obamacare made getting old worse.
“Getting older is not so bad, but it gets old dealing with healthcare bureaucracy,” he said.
BlueCross BlueShield told Emanuel that he should have called to cancel his plan before his birthday. He doesn’t understand why the insurance company or Healthcare.gov didn’t reach out to him before that time.
“They actually know how old you are because you’ve given them your date of birth,” Emanuel said.
Watch the full story from KJRH-OK below:
