Dealing with insurance is rarely a walk in the park in the United States. But one woman’s recent experience being assigned a new primary care physician (PCP) took a particularly dark turn.
“I don’t think I could make this up if I tried to,” Mollie Donihe (@molliedonihe) of Forth Worth, Texas, tells her Instagram following.
She goes on to explain that her health insurance plan changed recently. So she went online to find out the details. Specifically, she says she wanted to see who the company had assigned as her PCP and determine whether she would be able to switch to the doctor she had already been seeing.
But trying to switch doctors online kept pulling up a 404 error on the website, she says. So Donihe says she decided to look up the man assigned to her instead.
“I Google him, and the first thing that comes up his obituary,” she reveals. “He died in May.”
Donihe says she did her due diligence researching the details and making sure the doctor she had been assigned and the one whose obituary popped up were one and the same. But that wasn’t even the end of things.
“And then I go in to look at my care team, and there he is, there’s his information. Same details. And then it says a little asterisk down at the bottom: not in your plan’s network,” she continues. “So the PCP that they assigned me is an out-of-network dead guy? And I get a 404 when I try to change it?”
Viewers react to the absurdity
The last couple months have certainly showed that Americans are frustrated with the state of health insurance in this country. Many use dark humor to cope. And that was very much on display here after Donihe shared her story.
“Your appointment is a seance,” wrote @lafalca.
“Have you tried saying his name 3 times to see if he appears?” @coffinclubgirls suggested.
“Out of network and dead, that’s a new level of hell care,” said @bethebelle13, while @bethmakesmagic joked, “His death wasn’t authorized for your care, so all expenses will be out of pocket.”
Nightmares dealing with insurance-assigned PCPs
Oversights do happen, even if an insurance company still directing new patients to a doctor seven months after his death seems like the kind of delay that should have been sorted out much earlier. But it quickly became clear from the comments on Donihe’s video that she is far from the only person whose insurance has assigned a PCP who wasn’t up to the task.
“I went to see a periodontist. My insurance company gave me 3 options. The first is not accepting new patients. The second is not licensed to practice periodontal dentistry in the USA, only Europe (he is just a general dentist here). The third is deceased,” wrote @s_willing.
“This happened to me in 2004 when I was pregnant!” @rotarypark123 chimed in. “I was assigned an obstetrician who was dead. 25 weeks into my pregnancy, I finally had an appointment with a living doctor.”
One viewer said she works in insurance credentialing and that “unfortunately this happens ALL THE TIME,” adding, “Insurance networks can sure take our money, but they can’t keep track of their in-network providers.”
“I have BCBS. And last year they assigned me a provider who had died, called [and] they switched me to a provider that had retired. Called again [and was assigned] ANOTHER dead person,” @danicolden shared. “They have to be picking from the bottom of the list.”
“When I looked up the PCP I was assigned, I looked at a street view of his office. The window was painted with his name and said he also does cell phone repairs,” wrote @erinjustinscott.
The Daily Dot has reached out to Donihe via Instagram direct message.
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