Letters of Warning about Walgreens Take Care Clinic sent to Illinois Dept of Insurance, SHIP, Senior Services Plus, Attorney General for exploitation of Senior Citizens, Senior Advantage, IL Dept on Aging, 912 Super Seniors, AARP, President of Walgreens Gregory Wasson, Patriot Network, American Senior Association, AMAC
This is a warning to Senior Citizens regarding what is already happening with our health care.
The following is an account of what happened when I wasn’t covered for an urgent visit to Take Care Clinic run by Walgreens. This is what I sent to the Insurance Grievance Committee:

I have been sent to the Take Care Clinic in the past when my Doctor couldn’t see me . It was usually a case of some type of infection that needed to be treated and an emergency room wasn’t appropriate. As a result of the Doctory having me use this service, I would go to the Take Care Clinic when I needed some treatment that shouldn’t be left until my Doctor was able to see me. In the past, I would make a co pay and my insurance would pay the rest. Now due to the restrictions already in place with the Presidents anticipated Obamacare, the insurance companies are clamping down on what they will cover and the providers are not informing Senior Citizens about this. In addition, they do not respond to the inquiries by Seniors for the bills they receive unless the Senior raises a real fuss and gets the advocates involved. Below you will see a letter I wrote to the Insurance Company regarding this. Copies of this were sent to Walgreens take care clinic and to the Government assistance for Medicare recipients.

This is in response to your letter of 8/14/12 that I just received today, four days after your sending it.
I am disputing an action to dismiss this appeal because the delay was caused by Take Care stringing me along every month when I called them. I called them each time I received a bill and was told that they were working on it. They even promised to accelerate the claim. I didn’t find out until two days ago when I called and faxed the supervisor that they do not code visits to Take Care as urgent even though it was an urgent visit.

Needless to say, I am furious at their stall tactics. I went to that Clinic because it was on the weekend and at the time my Doctor didn’t have an answering service. I did try to call him. I was concerned that the eruption on my face which had grown in size and became inflamed was Mersa.

I extended all efforts to get this resolved. I wrote to the Dept of Insurance, SHIP, the Vice President of the Company, the insurance company and Take Care. I faxed the letters plus additional proofs of my efforts. I am a senior citizen living on moderate Social Security $16,000 a year. I have to be very cautious with my expenses.

Note that the first statement of benefits from United Healthcare showed I was covered. It wasn’t until the next month I got the bill from Take Care. I called the insurance company. They said Take Care needed to code it as Urgent Care. I called Take Care to tell them that’s what they needed to do. I gave them the provider number for United Healthcare so they could call them. They agreed to do so.
I am including proofs of all my efforts. With these it is apparent that the delay in my grievance is the direct result of Take Care stringing me along month after month. Now they tell me they never code as Urgent Care.
I am sending copies of all of this to SHIP and the Illinois Dept of Insurance. I am also sending all of this to Senior Organizations in order to warn Seniors about this Scam. In the future any emergency I have will wait until my Physician is in his office. I will not sit in the waiting room of emergency with sick children running around. The immune system of the Senior Citizen is not as strong as with a younger person. If I go to emergency, it will be in an ambulance. I urge you to reconsider your decision.

Dear readers, I strongly suggest that you file your complaints with your local Department of Insurance. There are also many websites which feature the inhumane, evil deeds of United Healthcare and its employees. I’d like to mention several of them as worth visiting and posting to.

More United Healthcare Complaints Boards

This company plays referral game. They make the referral process so annoying, that the referrals never materialize. They use insignificant details of any referral to avoid payment. Doctors offices hate them. HATE THEM! They ask for a referral for every single lab, every single examination detail. They know the system will cost their office more money to use their process than they have the manpower to devote to it.

United Healthcare plays by their own rules.  Especially when it come to prescriptions.  I was put on anti-depression and anti-anxiety medication by my doctor.  United Healthcare allowed me to take it just long enough to get evened out on it and start feeling better, then came up with excuses as to why I could not purchase it at my local pharmacy.  My doctor followed up on it, faxed in all of the paperwork required, and it was only supposed to take about a week…according to the person my husband talked to.  That was 3 months ago, and they still haven’t done anything.  They told me that eventhough my doctor marked the case urgent, it was up to them whether or not THEY deemed it urgent.  They did not deem it urgent because they did not consider it to be a life or death situation, eventhough I was taken off of work for a whole week because of my depression and anxiety, and have thoughts of hurting myself.  My whole family is being affected by this because I have horrible mood swings, and cry at the drop of a hat.  But do you think that the insurance company, that we pay every two weeks to provide a service really cares??  NO!!!  I am just another case number to them, and a non urgent one at that.  Basically, I am a nobody to them.

My name is Laura E. Engelsman-Bowser and my company uses United Health Care as our Health provider. My husband, William S. Bowser, Jr. is also on my plan as a dependent and he had a kidney transplant 14 years ago. As you can figure, my husband requires various medications to keep his new kidney healthy and to keep his body from rejecting this foreign object. Since UHC changed the protocol and no longer allows us to visit our local pharmacy for prescription refills, we have had nothing but difficulty. It is clear that UHC forces their customers to utilize Prescription Solutions (mail order) for all of their prescription drugs. At this point we have a major situation with Prescription Solutions and my husbands prescriptions. I will summarize the problem below.

My husband realized his prescriptions were running out for CellCept (250 mg), Neoral (100 mg) and Neoral (25 mg) so he phoned his doctor’s office on October 20, 2011 so they could send the prescription into Prescription Solutions. On Tuesday, October 25, 2011, Dr. Bloom’s office of University of Pennsylvania sent an E-Script into Prescription Solutions (PS). When my husband called to confirm the order on Wednesday, October 26, 2011, he was told by Prescription Solutions that they hadn’t received the request for Neoral(100mg). My husband continued to call and eventually got both his doctor’s office and Prescription Solutions on the phone together on Thursday Continue reading →

My wife went for a regular GYN checkup on February 3^rd, 2011, which included some standard tests, conducted by LabCorp. This resulted in three unpaid bills:

• Dr. C’s bill was for $242.68
• First LabCorp bill for $830
• Second LabCorp bill for $245

In response to the above claims, on February 28^th (almost one month later!), United Healthcare sent us a standard pre-existing conditions questionnaire, a letter asking for the names and contact information of all doctors whom my wife had visited between 10/1/2010 and 10/1/2010. Yes, this is just one day. I called UHC and asked about an explanation. They said that there was a computer error when the letter was generated and they would send a new one. So they did.

The new letter listing correct dates (time frame between 6/12/2010 and 9/12/2010) arrived a couple weeks later leading to further delay in re-processing! My wife and I filled it out and sent it as soon as possible (I didn’t keep a copy so I don’t have the exact date). Continue reading →

United Healthcare COULDN’T prove that my wife DIDN’T have pre-existing conditions. So, they assumed she did, and denied three claims! They requested that all doctors whom my wife had seen in the past need to send UHC letters confirming that she had no pre-initial conditions. The problem is that UHC declined to be receiving the letters and faxes the doctors were sending them!!! I was LUCKY and I won, read on to find out how! Continue reading →