Explanation of benefits for talk therapy being mailed
I have individual health insurance through Blue Shield of California (HMO), and they use the Magellan Health network for mental health. I’m in talk therapy, and for every session, Blue Shield snail-mails me a physical explanation of benefits to my home address, despite the fact that my settings with them are to be all digital. Besides being wasteful, this is a big privacy risk for me as I live in a house where other people are seeing that I’m getting all these envelopes and it’s raising questions, and they’re not the best at respecting my privacy (they’ve even opened the envelopes for my “convenience” despite them being labeled confidential on the outside—and I’ve made it very clear to them this is not okay behavior). (I am an adult, living with my family currently, and do not need them involved with the fact that I’m in therapy.)
When I called the number on the explanation of benefits, the representative from Blue Shield or Magellan (I really can’t tell which) told me that they can’t not send paper explanations of benefits for therapy visits.
Is this right? Is this some thing where insurance companies are required to send physical mail for every therapy appointment? It feels like a major privacy risk to me. If there isn’t a law about it, do you have any recommendations for how to press the issue with them, whether calling Blue Shield’s main customer support line, sending an email to some department there, or anything that will enable me to have this be digital only?
submitted by /u/throwawayok00001
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