Hmsa

Trying to simply shop for health insurance coverage and sign up for HMSA has been frightening and dysfunctional.

HMSA, or Hawaii Medical Service Association, is Blue Cross/Blue Shield in Hawaii. For a long time they were great, but not anymore. Blue Cross needs to do something. HMSA is making them look bad.

The knowledge and training of the phone personnel was often not what it should be. One person didn't speak enough English, one person was bad-tempered.

Their website information has serious deficiencies. The rates they list are for a 20? Year old. Your rates can be triple that. They need to list everyone's rates. I believe the page on their website with their contact information does not list the sales number? That is hard to get, for some reason. When you do call a number for a certain department, the recording may say you reached another department. I asked for information to be printed out and mailed to me. That representative told me that was against HMSA's rules.

Their open enrollment period for 2023 started November 1,2022. Until that day, they could not tell you their rates for 2023.

In spite of this, I eventually signed up for a plan. I asked if I could arrange automatic payments at that time. No, they needed to mail me a form which I needed to mail back to them to have automatic payments.

I got the form. I filled it out and mailed it back. The return envelope they seemed to have included didn't really fit the form. There is a possibility I confused my envelopes, but given everything else, it could be their mistake too. I put it in a regular envelope and addressed it to where they said.

When I signed up, they sent me an email with a confirmation number and a phone number to call to check the status of my membership. About four to seven days after I mailed the form, I called to check on it. When I gave the customer service representative my confirmation number, he had no idea what a confirmation number was. He said their records did not indicate they had received my form. He said it took them a while to process them. There were one and one half business days left to pay the premium. He speculated that maybe the representative at the Sales Dept. sent the wrong form or an older form. The Sales Department had indicated that the stuff they had mailed was part of a mass mailing.

He referred to a voided check which we were to send with the form. I didn't recall being asked to do that. He said the form had been selected and sent by the Sales Department, and he couldn't see their notes. He said I needed to talk to them.

It was not on the radar of this customer service representative to facilitate a health insurance payment due in one and a half days. Upon my strong suggestion, he said he could mail me another form which I could mail back. Obviously there was not enough time for that. Then he suggested that after I received the form by mail, I could go to HMSA in person to complete the task. In 2022.@#₹&&!

Upon further prompting, he said a manager could call me "to set up an account manually." Why, thanks.

I was worried about what happened to the form I had already sent. I asked if someone could go look for it in the processing room. He seemed to think it could be at more than one address, one being a P.O. Box. But wouldn't the P.O. Box mail get brought to their Keeaumoku headquarters? Further discussion of this was both ridiculous and fruitless. This representative had passive aggressive tendencies unbecoming of an employee of a health insurance company. However, there are enough problems with their customer service representatives that I really blame HMSA.

I called back two hours later, and got a different representative. She indicated that the first employee was misinformed about my options for paying my bill. The training of HMSA phone employees is a completely unacceptable.

Later that day I spoke to a manager who said they had received my form that day (or maybe just logged it in the system?). He said the first representative did not have access to that information. (But they can see our birth dates) Apparently the representative also had no idea the manager could see that information. HMSA had directed me to call the number where I reached that employee to check on the status of my membership. I wished he could have seen the status of the form I sent. 99% of other companies would have handled that better than HMSA.

Another draining roller coaster ride just trying to pay a bill at HMSA. Three and a half hours in a knot trying to do two simple tasks.

HMSA is pushing money away with both hands. There are also a worrying number complaints at the BBB about them.

It upsets me to see HMSA wasting my premium money on scholarships for future millionaires (doctors). There are probably marketing and promotion monies that could be better spent on operations. We all know HMSA.

MY RESEARCH ON PRIVATE HEALTH INSURANCE SOLD TO INDIVIDUALS IN HAWAII:
Sharing this for what it's worth. I was told by an employee at another health insurance company that only Kaiser and HMSA sell private health insurance to individuals in Hawaii. Based on my experience, that seems to be true. An HMSA platinum plan for a sixty year old non-smoking female is about $1,200. If she was an employee of a small business it would be $900. Presumably if she is an employee of a large business it would be less. There is some kind of HMSA plan with a medical savings account plan that would be about $900 for a woman in her early sixties. These prices do not include possible government subsidies.

If you qualify, you can get a high deductible plan with premiums under $400 a month for a sixty year old non-smoking female. There is a $9,100 deductible.

Besides traditional insurance, I found medical cost sharing organizations, or health cost sharing organizations. They are not insurance and can exclude pre-existing conditions and whatever they don't want to cover. The one I looked at most, Medi-Share, looked good at first, but turned out to have a lot of BBB complaints for non-payment of claims. They also seriously want you to be a certain type of Christian. I had thought they might have a loophole. If you want to join, they have quite a detailed questionaire for you to fill out. It looks like they might want to contact third parties to check the stuff you put down. One customer service representative I dealt with there was a great person. Two others were rude, edgy, and possibly mis-informed. I got too much email from this organization.

Medi-Share membership can be as little as $100-300 a month, depending. I cannot recommend this organization, but if someone wanted risk $100 a month hoping the coverage would work, it's a thought. In that instance, Obamacare might be another possibility.

UPDATE NOVEMBER 2023

The HMSA departments that give information to, communicate with, and sell plans to members were again an unbelievable pain.

When I joined a while ago I did not want paper bills. They said I had to have them until a particular condition happened that would enable them to bill me electronically. I don't even know why I have to have a bill every month, as the payments are automatic and don't vary. I don't exactly remember the magic condition that had to be fulfilled to make the annoying and wasteful paper bills go away. I eventually signed up for an online account thinking that was it. Nothing I saw onscreen at that time addressed this issue. I called the first phone number I found onscreen that seemed to be the right one to ask if I could get electronic bills now. There were a series of recordings asking me questions like what particular type of HMSA I had. None of the options seemed to fit.

I got through to someone who said, as always at HMSA, that I had reached the wrong department. They said they would get me to the membership department but first she asked me for a lot of detailed personal information so she could give it to the other person. Why couldn't I just tell the other person? Less time/data exposure.

She or the system took forever to transfer the call and give me the membership phone number in case we got cut off. Maybe they need a paper directory of internal phone numbers? Both people were gracious in tone, but I was annoyed. The membership person said they needed an email "linked" to my account to bill me electronically which they supposedly didn't have before(?). They'd been emailing me for a year. She indicated she could just switch my prefence to e-billing. I believe she was unable to explain what if any connection there is between e-billing and an online account. I believe she was also unable to explain why, if they were emailing me for a year, there was no email "linked" to the account?

A few months ago I got a survey from HMSA supposedly intended to improve their performance. It just asked if I knew various arcane things about them. This was infuriating. They need to change a lot of things but don't seem interested in that. While I was onscreen earlier re my online membership a large notice kept popping up asking if the information was helpful. It was infuriating because I don't think HMSA is trying to run these departments properly. They likely know how to do that.