So apparently, Anthem has hired Nancy Pelosi:

"We cannot tell if the accums have been moved from facets until there is an actual claim on the new ACA policy/system."

[Translation: "she must have new expenses for us to learn whether her previous ones count"]

Hunh?

Allow me to explain:

One of my clients has had an Anthem HSA-compatible health plan for a number of years. Effective July 1, her plan was "mapped" (transitioned) to a new, similarly-configured ACA-compliant plan with a slightly higher deductible.

A few weeks before the "new" plan took effect, she had an injury. The cost of treatment satisfied her deductible, and we wanted to know if these expenses would apply to her new plan, or whether she has had a brand new deductible as of July 1.

Look, this is not complicated: Does one receive deductible credit from a "legacy" plan when one transitions to an ACA one or not?

Since I couldn't get a straight answer from my regular sources, I reached out to the media relations folks (a practice with which I have had previous success) for help. I had already written the bulk of this post, castigating Anthem for its lack of transparency and forthrightness, and included several quotes from it.

I was soon contacted by a very nice young lady who asked for a copy of the proposed post, which I gladly provided. She promised to look into it. This was Monday. It is now Thursday, and the fact that we still have no definitive answer (despite also providing my client's name and policy number) tells me all that I need to know.

The rocket surgeons at Anthem will not give us a straight answer to a very simple question. It seems to me that there can be only two reasons for this:

One, they truly don't know, in which case they are so incompetent as to have no business issuing "insurance" contracts that they don't even understand themselves, or they are deliberately obfuscating (for what purpose I have no idea).

Right now I'm leaning towards the former. In which case, one would do well to avoid having anything to do with Anthem's "insurance" policies.

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