Asking for last-minute advice; local people most useful, but any experience helpful

[pameladean]

So I filed our taxes late again and am therefore only now narrowing down the not-very-appetizing choices remaining on MNSure for health insurance for David and me. I found a pretty good and a slightly better plan; the first is through Health Partners and the second through UCare. Both of them have a lot of complaints on the BBB site and scattered about here and there. My mother, who used to work for an insurance company and still has an interest in how they operate, is not very enthusiastic about Health Partners, though the anecdotal evidence she has is somewhat outdated. Health Partners seems to have inspired a lot more annoyance and dislike in the people it billed for premiums they had paid, whose doctors it made repeatedly re-authorize the same prescriptions, and so on. I have had a UCare plan before and, aside from having a very primitive website, they did not do anything egregious during the year I was their customer. But the Health Partners plan has a lower co-insurance and a lower co-pay. What to do, what to do? I'm leaning towards UCare, partly because they use the Fairview provider network.

A major annoyance in all this is that no plan available on the exchange includes HCMC in its network. I've been at HCMC since 2002 and I really don't want to leave, but we are eligible for quite a hefty subsidy on the exchange and really couldn't afford any health insurance if we had to pay all of it. But I am viewing all other provider networks with a very jaundiced eye. Anyway--

If anybody has experience with either provider that seems relevant to this choice, I'd love to hear it.

Thanks so much. One day I will make a post with actual content.

P.S. The upshot of the last problem I asked for advice about was that lsanderson most kindly came over and took down all the tiny trees with a Sawsall and a green-wood blade. He did this on the last day before it snowed for the first time back in November. I failed to bundle up the branches in time for the last yard-waste pickup of the year and was still contemplating doing so and calling the city, as the city say sone may, to arrange for an out-of-the-ordinary yard-waste pickup. In the meantime I took coffeeem's recommendation of A-Tree Service, and they dealt with the larger trees that had got tangled up in the powerl ines, and with the one branch of the Chinese elm that was hanging threateningly over the garage and rubbing on the tree's main trunk while it did so. The day, which involved Xcel energy's dropping the power lines and the power consequently being out for about five hours, felt quite traumatic at the time, but it all worked out well aside from the hole left in the bank account. As a very nice bonus, when they cleaned up all the branches they had cut themselves they also took all of Larry's. Thanks to all who made suggestions and recommendations.

Pamela

Comments

[naomikritzer]

I have been using the HealthPartners network pretty much exclusively since 2000. Ed worked there for years, and they provide employees an excellent health care plan but it's a much better plan if you stay in-network.

I like the clinics and the doctors. When I need to ask Member Services a question they've picked up quickly. The one bad experience I ever had with a provider was an eye care person (not an ophthalmologist but the next level down, optometrist maybe?) who was very impatient with me when I was trying to keep my eyes open for an exam; I didn't even complain about her at the time, but when I called for my next appointment, I specified that I didn't want to see the person I'd seen last time and they said, "oh, she's long gone, apparently there were a lot of complaints." There are certain things I've had to wait a long time for, but never when it was urgent. (For example, when I wanted a general exam from a dermatologist that was a six-month wait. When I was really suffering from an extremely itchy skin problem that was not going away, I was seen within 36 hours.) Their clinics seem to be well-managed and it's rare that I have to wait past the appointment time to be seen.

Regions Hospital is an excellent hospital. It's where my mother was taken last summer after she suffered a catastrophic complication of a surgery that was supposed to be minor. (The surgery was at Abbot, I think. Outpatient. She was discharged home and seemed fine, then collapsed a few days later.) Regions doctors initially thought she was having a heart attack and were doing a catheterization to figure out what was going on when she went into cardiac arrest in the cath lab. They did open heart surgery in the cath lab and actually pulled her through. Then two days later the wound in her heart re-opened and this time they were not able to save her. I don't blame the Regions staff for that, though; she received excellent care and not everyone gets a good outcome from a catastrophic health situation.

At a more minor level, Kiera wound up in the Regions ER two years ago with a broken finger (it turns out that urgent cares will not set displaced bones). She was seen promptly, treated kindly and respectfully, and the ER doc did an excellent job setting the finger, according to the Orthopedic surgeon who examined it a few days later after the swelling had gone down. My Grammie was seen in the Regions ER last month after falling and hitting her head: she was treated with respect and compassion. Also, when we were waiting for the results of her CT scan, I had mentioned to one of the people who came in that I was really hoping to get her home to her assisted living residence that evening: the results came in at the same time as an ABSOLUTELY CRITICAL patient and every staffer was being paged to this other room...and yet the Resident who'd been handling her care came dashing in to basically say, "everything looks fine, you can take her home now, if you have any questions stick around and I'll answer them later because I can't right now but if you want to just take her home you can!" Everyone also just took my word for it that I was her proxy, which was good. (It's unusual to have your grandchild rather than your child managing your health stuff, but see above about my mother's death. :-\ I didn't have the forms with me when I went running over to the hospital.)

Anyway. I know people who have run into major frustrations, but that is true of 100% of all health care providers and insurers. My experience has been that it is a really good network.

[pameladean]

Thank you so much! This is why I decided to make the post -- people who are pleased very seldom post reviews on the BBB site. You and dreamshark are making me feel much better about the choice I'm presented with, though I can't say it's actually getting easier. 8-) Still, feeling that I'm unlikely to be able to make a major mistake here is very helpful.

I am so sorry about your mother -- I've said this before, but didn't understand the circumstances, yikes (and as for Abbott, pfeh, they misdiagnosed my mom with stage 3 brain cancer in 1995), but glad that she got the best treatment.

P.