Carefirst Blue Cross Blue Shield

There should be a «no star option». There are no words to express how much I loathe CareFirst at this time. I had such a disgusting phone conversation today where the representative said I couldn’t use their website to find in-​network providers because it isn’t accurate and a provider could drop out at any time. And they could not tell me where I could go. And many more comments similar to that. I called Maryland Insurance Administration and told them to get a copy of the recording of the call, it was that bad. When I pay $ 1800/​mo for our family of 4 coverage I deserve better treatment than that. During that call I asked about out-​of-​state coverage. They gave me a phone number for BlueCard and that was not the proper place to refer me to. I also asked about a claim they have been stalling for the past 9 months and no help there. I’ve had Maryland Insurance Administration help me get my 80% of a $ 2500 claim they were denying me a few years back. Despicable company. I wish there was another viable option for to select from for our health insurance.

Horrible. Call center awful. Tech support worse. Today their website lost our link to our HSA how does that happen??? If you don’t have to take them for insurance do not.

The interface with its customers, whether by phone or internet, is terrible. My guess is that the personnel with whom the customers interact are competent, but they are hobbled by either rules written by imbeciles or the administrative staff needs to visit a proctologist.

Ive had them for 8 years through my job with no problems. Until ER copayment went from $ 25 to $ 100… But that’s the nature of the business.

CARE FIRST IS HORRIBLE!
Just signed up for Care First MD through the Md Healthcare website (Dec 2014). The MD state health care website worked great and the contact with customer service there was great.
However, once it transferred to Care First things were horrible. I made my first payment for insurance to Care First through Bank of America electronic banking system (on Dec 24) — of which Care First is a registered electronic banking service partner.
Payment is still in limbo on the Care First side and I still do not show I have insurance.
I have made 3 calls and one visit to their office in Ownings Mills. I have sent multiple faxes with proof of payment — all to no avail. I still have no proof of insurance even though it i now Jan 7^th 2014 and my payment was delivered to Care First on Dec 29^th and applied on January 5^th according to Bank of America.
My multiple contacts with Customer Service have been uniformly awful — I’ve burned hours of my time trying to resolve this. When I first called to confirm on Dec 30, their whole customer phone system was down all day because they couldn’t handle the traffic!
DO NOT SIGN UP WITH CARE FIRST!!!

Wish there was a negative star option — they have been TERRIBLE. I have never had such a poor experience with an insurer. We have a fully funded group plan through my husband’s employer — under VA law, these plans must cover a particular kind of service for a condition my son has. We submit claims twice per month for the past 2 years, They have made the same mistake on more than 80% of the claims. I have a part time job calling them about this. Calls are generally 40 minutes each and I usually have to call more and I usually have to call at least twice per claim because each time the rep has to look up things, contact an adjuster, figure out what their doing, etc. I have been given 3 or more different reasons in the same phone call for why the error took place, etc. The service is supposed to be reimbursed in 15 minute units, but the claims processor usually just enters the number of hours of service (2 hours is 8 units, but they just enter the #2 so we only get reimbursed for ½ hour instead of 2 hours, etc. Sometimes, they only enter the number of days on which he had service. So if the provider came 15 hours over 3 days, they enter the #3 and we get paid for 45 minutes not 15 hours). It’s ridiculous. They try to delay and delay and delay payments. At this point I believe the incompetence is intentional. Not worth the premiums.

I paid my first premium in April/​2014 for a policy that should have been activated as of 5÷1÷14. I even called carefirst to confirmed that the premium was received and assigned the primary doctor. The representative told me that the primary doctor’s information was updated and will send out an insurance card. It is July already and my policy has not been activated yet which means I have no insurance. Payments were received by carefirst in time each month but I can not use my insurance because it has not been actived. I called carefirst SEVERAL TIMES and all I have been told was that it is in the process.
It has been over 2 months and carefirst still has no idea when it would be activated and doesn not know why it is taking so long. I had to go see a couple doctors in June and I was not able to use the insurance that I had paid for!
I can’t cancel the insurance at this point since I can’t go to a differnet carrier until the next enrollment date due to Obama care act.
Since it has been over two months, carefirst should at least let me know what really is going on instead of trying to fool me by telling me that they don’t know why it is taking so long!!!
Would I stay with carefirst next year??? HELL NO!
And if I don’t make the payments until my policy gets actived, carefirst would cancel my contract and send the balance due to collecton… even though I can’t even use the insurance until it is activated… and who knows when that would be at this point!!!

Carefirst is the MOST imcompetent company I have ever dealt with, no wonder our healthcare system is so messed up. I applied for dental insurance, but cancelled it before it became effective. I did what they asked, I faxed in a signed letter with all of the information. They claim they never recieved it, I called, confirmed the fax number, and sent it again, they claim they did not receive it, I call again, get their address, and send the fax and a letter in the mail. They claim they never received either. The dental dept tells me to ignore the bills and it will automatically cancel. Well seven months later, I am still getting bills. Still not resolved. I am sending another fax and a registered letter this time and see what happens. Now another problem, I signed up for healthcare, they received and accepted my application, I got confirmation, I get the bill and it is for a different health plan that I never applied for. This has not been resolved yet either. So I don’t even know if I have healthcare right now. I am now filing a complaint to their HQ in Kentucky. I am sure nothing will be done by them either.

How does Carefirst currently have two stars? That’s two too many, in my opinion. As I type, I’m currently on minute 36 of being on hold. Oh yeah, this is also probably my 20^th call to BCBS this week. The online account system is apparently down, and I’ve even gotten a lovely automated message on the phone explaining that they are simply too busy to take my call. The reason I’m calling is to pay the monthly health insurance premium that they forgot to bill me for, otherwise I will not have health insurance next month. Even if their online system were in working order, I could not pay my bill online because they haven’t updated my plan information. I have wasted hours and hours of my time over the past two weeks being on hold with these people. Definitely going to search for a new insurance provider.

I have been extremely impressed with BCBS of MD. After going through a major medical event where I was in multiple hospitals and had multiple billing issues, I found their services both very fair in the co-​pay department and when I had problems, every person I talked to solved the issue I was having. I’m sorry these other people have had such poor experiences. This was not my case at all.
For example, I had a problem with some stupid medical center that has gotten my billing wrong about 7 times and just won’t stop, to the point where they are sending my stuff to collections. Guess what? BCBS already payed them, but the other system is so messed up they can’t even tell you paid them until YOU prove it through providing a canceled check. Ridiculous. I called BCBS and their rep called the place, got it all sorted out on the phone while I was on hold, and then explained the situation to me. This kind of treatment is what we deserve from our insurance companies.

Even one star is too much for them. I’d like to give them less than zero.
Their customer service is the worst ever. Not only telephone but also e-​mail. (They never reply back to your e-​mail request)
I’ve been calling them almost 4 months with same simple claim and my claim is not solved yet. I think the employee there have been trained that way in order to make customers give up on their benefit…
I wish my company change the insurance provider ASAP.
If you can choose your own insurance, stay away with Carefirst!

Less than zero would be right.
I had surgery that was approved, by CareFirst, then I started receiving the «explanation of benefits» with all the fees attached… all in all it is about $ 27,000, and they sent me a check saying that $ 278 was covered.
I called CareFirst billing to get clarification and they said that this was reading the information correctly and that I was going to owe my Surgeon, assistant surgeon, surgery center, anesthesiologist, nurse, the amounts shown on the «explanation of benefits» because it was not covered, or was not «an allowed» procedure.
The woman I spoke to in billing was not only thoroughly rude, she didn’t know what she was talking about. And she stonewalled me with every question I had, as if they are taught to do this because they don’t want to pay anything.
Between me and my employer, we pay over $ 500 per my for me as an healthy individual… this was the first minor surgery procedure I’ve ever had.
When I called the Dr’s office to reassure them that I was looking further into this and to know if I should expect to be getting bills from them, the billing contact from my Dr’s office reassured me that they had sent a letter to Carefirst and it had come back with approval to do the surgery. She said that they always refuse the claims when they go in the first time — this makes more work, and makes things more complicated in hopes that the Dr’s office will just write off the amount owed rather than Carefirst having to pay for the procedures.
My Dr’s office billing contact also said that they will be resubmitting the claims with the approval letter as evidence that the surgery was approved by them before I had the surgery.
As far as I’m concerned this insurance company is a BIG SCAM and should be investigated by the government for fraud.

I also would give them a zero if I could. Paying my provider when they should have paid me has resulted in weekly phone calls for the past 6 months, and no resolution. Also in having to spend hours on phone for out of network benefits that are consistently denied. They immediately key in the claims from in-​network doctors, but it is months I have to wait to even see one of my out of network claims in the system. I have made weeky phone on this issue, as well, for 6 months, and am told they have «escalated» it to a supervisor. Whatever that means. It still takes up to 6 months for them to key in an out of network claim. Terrible.

The ONLY reason I stay with Carefirst Blue Cross Blue Shield is that I don’t have employer-​provided health care and this is one of the only plans I can afford. The company seems to be terribly disorganized with no internal communication.
My problem is that I move often. The easiest way to keep track of my bills is to use online billing, but does Carefirst offer this? No… they sort of half-​ass it by letting you pay online, but they won’t send reminders or tell you the amount that you owe; you have to check your paper bill for that. Which wouldn’t be such a problem if Carefirst could manage to CHANGE MY ADDRESS CORRECTLY. When I moved last Spring, I promptly called Carefirst to give them my new address. Had I moved to a new zipcode? Yes. Okay, then I needed to send a letter to a P.O. Box in Kentucky – they couldn’t help me over the phone. So I sent the letter as instructed, with all of the required information. A month later, I get a forwarded bill from Carefirst. I call again, and am given the same instructions. I sent THREE letters to this P.O. box with no result. Finally I went to the online feedback section of the website and submitted my request there. And that worked… unfortunately, I moved again soon after Carefirst finally caught up with me. I promptly went to the website and submitted a new address change request. Done and done, I thought, until I received my next bill. It had been sent to my FIRST address, forwarded to my SECOND address, and then re-​forwared to my CURRENT address (God bless the USPS for tracking me down). Today I called Carefirst again. When the woman on the phone started to tell me that I needed to send a written request to this P.O. Box in Kentucky, I started to cry. I politely told her that I was sorry that I was upset, but I was incredibly frustrated and didn’t know what else to do. She was actually very sympathetic and told me that she would try to submit a change of address request for me… and that I should also send a written request to that P.O. Box. She was definitely kind and helpful, but the company she works for is incredibly messed up. Who knows if it will work or not. In the meantime, I have to keep guessing when my bills are due and paying them through the website, since if I waited for them to finally arrive, I would be late in paying them.

I also wish I could give them 0 stars.
I have lost count of how many claims they have processed incorrectly, and how many hours … perhaps days or weeks … I have spent trying to fix these issues via phone calls. At this point, I have to employ my human-​resources rep to get their messes straightened out.
Examples of erroneous information and actions they have sworn by:
— The incorrect mailing address I was supposed to use for submitting PPO claims, which was a PO box CLOSED by the post office BECAUSE NO ONE at BlueCross HAD PAID THE USPS INVOICES. My HR rep eventually tracked down an alternate address that is not posted anywhere, so I have continued to use it.
— They are completely ignorant of the actual terms of my employer-​negotiated contract. They have no idea what the actual limitations are regarding visits to certain providers; my HR rep confirmed that whatever contract terms they were reading to me over the phone were very different than what was in the contract she, her CareFirst rep, and our home office possessed.
— Even though both my claims and attached invoices demonstrated that I had already paid my out-​of-​network doctor IN FULL, they repeatedly wrote and sent reimbursement checks to my doctor. When both the doctor’s office and I complained about these erroneous payments, they actually INVENTED the excuse that my state had suddenly changed its reimbursement policy, and that CareFirst was no longer allowed to directly reimburse me for treatment I had already paid for. Instead, they expected the doctor to cash the check and then pay me back. WTF? Of course, this was an absolute lie. Maybe I should give them points for creativity. It took me months to get my money back from CareFirst.
There are many more issues but I don’t have the time.
If you e-​mail them, you will not receive an e-​mail response within the two business days their automatic confirmation indicates. it may be a week or a month before you get an e-​mail response, and you can bet your salary it will either not address your question or provide you with insufficient or incorrect information.
My doctors think this insurance is a joke and refer to it as «CareLast.»
I am stuck with this insurance, since I have specialized health issues that require out-​of-​network provider care. Communicating with them actually negatively affects my health, because it causes my stress level to skyrocket.