The manager of a Redding pharmacy will not be recommending Covered California to any of her customers. After completing a personal application for the healthcare website, she received 87 phone calls from insurance solicitors within hours.
Shante Luster complained that she was badgered by health insurance companies. “Within three hours I had 87 different phone calls from multiple healthcare companies, two to four minutes apart,” she claimed. According to ABC7 KRCR News, Lim’s Pharmacy, which Luster manages, is losing their group healthcare coverage. She called on Covered California to explore her options under the mistaken impression that it would be user-friendly. Unfortunately, the application requested that she provide her cell phone number. Within ten minutes of finishing the online application, she started receiving the calls.
Margaret Beck, a certified agent, contends that Covered California does not give out personal information on customers but admits that it is not user-friendly. “We don’t get anything that refers people,” Beck said. “They’re not even really terribly agent-friendly at Covered California, to be candid.”
Covered California Spokesman James Scullary insists that Covered California would not give Luster’s information out and claims that, when he checked their database, Luster wasn’t listed. However, Luster maintains that she deals with health insurance all day as a part of her job and is sure that she was on the correct website. “I will definitely be advising our employees here not to use the Covered California website,” Luster said. “It’s inundating and intimidating.”