GEORGIA — Michele Fischbach says she had to pay hundreds of dollars out of her own pocket for a new prescription at the pharmacy this week because her health insurance coverage appears to no longer exist.
“I went online and tried to sign on and they said there is no active medical policy. So, I freaked,” Fischbach said.
Channel 2 Consumer Investigator Justin Gray has learned that about 20,000 Georgians are impacted by a system glitch in the rollout of Georgia’s new Obamacare marketplace, Georgia Access that makes it appear that they are uninsured.
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“They are covered,” Georgia Insurance Commissioner John King assured Gray. King says that there will be no gap in coverage for these Georgians.
Fischbach has renewed the same health coverage annually on the federal Obamacare marketplace for the past several years. She asked her insurance agent to do the same this year through Georgia Access.
Now that Georgia has rolled out its own exchange, all Georgians are now required to use Georgia Access, instead of the federal marketplace.
“I called her. I said, it is open enrollment. Let us re-enroll. She says, No problem. I have got this,” Fischbach said.
Georgia Access is now mailing out letters to 20,000 Georgians like Fischbach who the Georgia Access system determined had duplicate insurance policies.
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That happened because Georgia Access auto-enrolled those policyholders in their former plans and the policyholders also enrolled themselves.
The system then automatically and without the policyholder’s knowledge canceled their original insurance coverage.
“The system was determining that we are going to go with your last entry. That is the coverage you are going to get, and we are going to cancel the old entry if you had duplicate,” King said.
“It was the most panic, vulnerable feeling,” Fischbach said.
A Marietta man also dealing with the same confusion wrote Channel 2 Action News, “Stress is a trigger of my chronic illness, and not knowing if I had coverage really scared me. Imagine needing to go to the hospital or see my doctor, only to be told that I would not have coverage.”
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King says anyone who receives one of the letters should reach out to his office and they will make sure their insurance coverage is active. He believes in all these cases while the previous policy was indeed canceled, the customer should have a new and active policy.
“There is coverage, just not under that old policy,” King said.
The Georgia Access system was designed to prevent duplicate policies to protect consumers from having IRS and tax problems if they were mistakenly issued multiple subsidies.
You can reach Georgia Access Consumer Support at 888-687-1503.
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