Call #1 reference number 151110001871 Called at 2:54pm
I spoke to a gentleman named Floyd. Upon him asking for my phone number, still irritated about not receiving a call back I said I don't see the point, I gave it yesterday and never received a call back so what exactly is my number for? His response, "Ma'am if you could please act professionally, did you request a call back?" Seriously??? I said, "well like you JUST said, can I have your number in case we get disconnected, doesn't that imply that in the event we get disconnected, I'll get a call back?" His response, "I'm sorry for that implication." What the what?? I pressed and he said let me look into why you didn't get a call back, and he put me on hold. He came back and stated after speaking to a supervisor that they were "having server issues at the time and they show the call was dropped but they were unable to access my contact information". I said "ok, well are the servers up and running now?" to which he replied, "yes" and I said "ok, so seeing as it's now the afternoon the following day, couldn't someone have called me back today?" He didn't have an answer for that. I asked for a supervisor, was put on hold and was told there is no supervisor available even though 2 minutes before he'd gotten an answer from a "supervisor".
Moving on, he assured me he could help me and that we would definitely qualify for assistance. When I stated why does everyone seem so confident when the last person was always unable to find assistance for us he stated "well we all have different skills and some may not have paid attention during training classes". Wow. These are government employees!
While we was inputting the information, I questioned him about appeals and asked if we qualify this year, then we should have last year and if I could appeal what I've been paying this whole year and he said "That's all in the past, lets worry about now." Easy for him to say, he's not the one who has been paying over $500 month for an insurance plan with a $3500 deductible we are no where close to meeting even after a cancer scare resulting in 2 mris, a bone scan and plenty of doctors appointments.
Our call disconnected/dropped at 3:55
I took 5 minutes to get the kids up from naps and I called back at 4pm
Call #2 reference number 151111-003955
I spoke to a woman named Katina who was very friendly and helpful. She understood my frustration and looked over my application. She also informed me that the way the system works is they og if a call is dropped and then it goes into the system to generate a call back. The person with whom you're speaking never actually calls back. Obviously this system is flawed because they "system" hasn't returned any dropped calls.
She stated that it's possible we weren't eligible because we only put annual income and not monthly and assistance goes of monthly. That's the first I'd heard that. She also asked if we own our home, to which I responded yes. She said we could deduct the amount of interest and taxes we pay annually from the gross income reported to also help with assistance. Why is this the first I'm hearing about this? Why did no one mention this last year. This could've made a difference last year and this entire year we've been paying! Again, according to the table (See below) we should be eligible without having to do that and no one can tell me why we're not, BUT if it could help why not. We did this and as we were getting all the numbers in,surprise surprise! We were disconnected at 5:03pm.
Call #3 reference #151111-004176 5:05pm
Spoke with a woman named Deasha.
At this point I was incredibly frustrated. Did I mention my daughter has a 102.7 fever upon waking from nap? I've been at this 2 days in a row now so Deasha got an earful. She made the mistake of asking for my phone number for a call back. I lost it.
She kept asking for my information to get started and I said why!! we're just going to get disconnected again! Who can I call if we get disconnected again? Because with 2 little kids I cannot keep calling back after being disconnected and sit on hold for a minimum of a half hour before speaking to a person. She said you can go online and do the application yourself. I said I understand that but you guys keep telling me there's some error making us not eligible so I should do it over the phone. I said what department runs the health exchange, I need to know how I can go higher because this is ridiculous. She said "you can contact the state of Maryland." Ugh. I give up. So I swallowed my pride and let her start the process for the 4th time in 24 hours.
She again, assured me that based on income we should qualify, yada yada yada. We got through the app and much to my surprise (total sarcasm) we qualified for a grand total of $0 in monthly subsidies. I discussed appeals with her and she said an appeal was something she had to complete. I said ok and if we get disconnected can I assume the appeal has been filed? She said yes. She said the appeal instructed her to first try getting a price from the anonymous browser. I asked what that meant and it's essentially getting an estimate of what you qualify for without entering all your socials, etc. It asks for your ages, income, and county you reside in. I gave her all this and we entered the income minus the mortgage tax amount which falls much less than what the table describes as eligible.
Here's what we get based on that info:
So I pressed on. I still want to appeal. I was transferred to a supervisor at 6pm.
Supervisor's name: Kito
I spoke to Kito until about 6:40 and most of the time was spent with him trying to convince me I shouldn't appeal. His reasoning was that there was additional criteria that could be reason for denial. The reason for the denial he said was most likely our ages and county. If we entered 50 as age we'd be eligible. So that whole doing away with discrimination thing that ObamaCare promised? Instead of discriminating against elderly, now it's the young. And I questioned what in the world does the county I live in have to do with a darn thing? He had no answers for my questions.
I'm hopeful that an appeal will provide me with an answer as to exactly WHY we're not eligible. He instructed me on how to file the appeal myself. (If you remember, the previous staff member told me it's something they handle)
He also suggested in the mean time I contact a broker to try to find a plan more affordable for us because there's no answer as to how long the appeal process could take. Days, weeks, months, no idea. So while on the phone with him, he advised me to finalize the application and then I could contact a broker.
I logged in and followed his instructions and it kept taking me to the beginning of the application as if nothing had been completed. When I tried to start over, I kept getting a server error. Apparently, he'd been logged in to my account at the same time as me so there might be an issue. He said to see if it resvoles over night and he'd call me the following day (11/12) around 5pm to see if it worked and I was able to contact a broker (application must be finalized before contacting a broker). We ended the call around 6:40pm with the understanding he'd be following up the next evening.
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