United HealthCare

Can’t leave messages for provider, recording repeatedly tell u to go online or patient portal, but I’m a relationship type of person prefer to have human touch. Lousy services!

*Absolutely Horrible*

My employer switched providers from Aetna to United HealthCare in January. I work for a great company who has always taken amazing care of its employees. However, after the 27th time HR tried to convince us that we would have the same effective coverage, I grew suspicious.

These clowns epitomize what is wrong with medicine today. They are the ones who are trying to keep patients from going to Emergency Rooms:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/10/health/united-health-insurance-emergency-care.html

Here's what's prompting me to write this review:

My wife woke up with extreme lower back pain 17 days ago. She's been going to physical therapy, and her primary care provider prescribed Oxycodone. Her pain specialist can and will treat her, but not without an MRI. We have been going back and forth with United Healthcare for 2 and a half weeks trying to get the MRI approved. They denied it. repeatedly. Her doctor had a "peer to peer" follow up conversation with United Healthcare, but they continue to deny coverage.

I am going to pay for the MRI with my own cash because my wife's pain is important to me, and I want her to be able to get treatment. The amount I pay will not even count toward my out of pocket maximum because they didn't approve the procedure.

So, we've wasted 17 days waiting for insurance to pay for a test to diagnose the problem causing the pain.

I am now exploring secondary coverage beyond what me and my employer pay United Healthcare monthly so that we can have real coverage.

United Healthcare is a red-tape machine engineered and deliberately constructed to PREVENT THE PAYMENT OF ANY CLAIMS.

Their policy may look good on paper, but in practice they are THE WORST INSURANCE COMPANY I'VE EVER DEALT WITH. Please save your money and pick a better company.

I just heard another Arizona tv 3 On Your Side report, about a woman who was insured by United Healthcare, being billed nearly $1,500 for medical expenses by the medical provider, allegedly covered by United Healthcare. As it turned out, those expenses WERE covered and, eventually, after the poor woman had to jump through about a million hoops to get the situation rectified equitably, United Healthcare finally admitted that the expenses WERE covered under her contract and, under duress from the news agency, ended up paying the bills that were legally covered in the full amount of nearly $1,500.
United Healthcare will attempt to take advantage of a naive customer to deny coverage.
SO UNETHICAL.
Why would anyone in their right mind trust United Healthcare?
I certainly won't, and, gentle reader, NEITHER SHOULD YOU!

They are an AWFUL company. They keep stuffing my neighbors' and my mailboxes with junk mail. They don't even know to whom they are mailing. NO regard for the environment. The commercials are terrible. They pay PARTIAL for health care. If they don't care about the environment nor for people, how good of a company are they?

I would give them zero, if I could. We have had to use United Healthcare for many many years due to my husband's employment. I took a job at the beginning of 2020, which offered AETNA, which was awesome, but had to cancel due to school closures and taking EFMLA to be home with my youngest son, which forced us back to United Healthcare. My husband contacted them, along with his HR dept. during open enrollment and let them know we needed to sign up again for their coverage because we were losing my insurance. Today, 7/12/21, I just found out after I called United Healthcare, and was told that they haven't been paying anything towards any of our claims since April of last year. I never once got a letter or phone call asking if we had any other primary insurance, so I was shocked. So, after Melanie and Angela condescendingly tried to "explain" the situation, that I understood perfectly, Angela (the supervisor) hung up on me, after I requested to be able to take their survey for customer feedback. So, I am here, voicing my disgust with this company. It would be so much better if healthcare prices were reasonable enough for us to deal with our provider's directly. This middle man health insurance has only worsened a person's opportunity for care and increased the prices - the same prices that they can never give you directly because they don't "know" the price until they are billed by your provider and you play the "let's surprise me with the cost" game. It's a scam and we as the patients should be able to know how much everything will cost before a visit/procedure. Instead it's all handled by Insurance conglomerates and lobbyists and politicians.

They don’t cover my therapist even after he’s spent months trying to get my session claims approved (I’ve been seeing him for years, so I’m not about to change) and as soon as I opted out of using THEIR mail-order pharmacy, the pharmacy I use went from being able to give me three MONTHS of meds at a time to only being able to give me three WEEKS at a time. Notably, if I opt back in and start using the UHC pharmacy, I can get FOUR months at a time, but I don’t want to change pharmacies and have to deal with new people who don’t know me or my situation. I’ve never had these issues with any previous insurance provider. They don’t care what’s best for you, only what’s best for them.

They get one extra star because at least they cover the cost of my prescription.

If you have United Healthcare, and need to call them, quit your job because anything you call about, from changing your address, to a question about an Rx will take four hours, six calls, and a lot of frustration. (BTW, you are not allowed to change your address by yourself online.) And once you have taken a day off to change your address with United Healthcare, a month later you will discover it has not been changed. And you will talk with many people at United Healthcare whose first language is not English, so if you live in Albuquerque, look out...they are lost. Or they can't pronounce an American name like Dianne. Or, if you ask to speak to a supervisor, they put you on hold for 20-30 minutes and then disconnect the call because they think they will be in trouble. So you get to start all over again. And, unless you ask for a supervisor, don't call to ask about a medication because they don't know. They act like they know, and they can read their little handbook to you, (the same one you have probably read before you called them), but they really don't know, so add a few hours for that phone call. And the robot at the beginning who asks you for your date of birth, well she can't hear or distinguish spoken words very well so 1951 becomes 1915 over and over and over, (yes robot, I'm 106), so you get to repeat that several times. Honestly, I could just scream! I will be spending the next three months researching a health care insurance that has good customer service because at this point, I'd rather have fewer benefits than spend the rest of my life losing half a day every month trying to get a question answered. United Healthcare does not care. They should be United Health because there is no "Care" with them at all. Let me end on a bright note. About one out of every 12-15 calls, you will be lucky enough to talk with a nice person, who understands and speaks English, who helps you. Treasure that call. You won't get another for a long long time.

UNITED HEALTHCARE IS WITHOUT A DOUBT THE WORST PROVIDER I HAVE EVER HAD. I HAVE TO TAKE DAYS OFF FROM WORK TO SCHEDULE APPOINTMENTS BECAUSE IT TAKES MULTIPLE LENGTHY PHONE CALLS IN A DAY TO EVEN REACH DOCTORS THAT ULTIMATELY ARE NO LONGER IN THEIR NETWORK OR SOME OTHER INCREDIBLY FRUSTRATING CIRCUMSTANCE. THE DOCTORS I AM REFERRED TO NEVER TREAT OR ARE AVAILABLE FOR MY NEEDS. EVERY APPOINTMENT TAKES MONTHS TO GET AND THE REFERRALS ARE MISDIRECTED TO ENTITIES THAT DO NOT OPERATE AT ALL IN ACCORDANCE WITH INFORMATION YOU JUST SPENT HOURS ON THE PHONE TO GET! THEY ARE DESPICABLE AND USELESS!! IF ONLY I COULD RATE THEM LOWER! WITCH DOCTORS ARE A BETTER SOURCE OF TREATMENT THAN UNITED HEALTH CARE! UGH

United Healthcare does not care about you, only getting your premiums so they can make a profit. I have been told by 4 doctors only surgery will fix my spine. UHC denied coverage for the surgery because their doctor feels it's not medically necessary. This doctor hasn't spoken to me or performed an examine. UHC would rather see you completely disabled and in a wheelchair than see you have any quality of life.