SHADES OF DOCTOR HELL

The one place more horrifying than Doctor Hell is Medical Insurance Plan Limbo. Some 45,000 Pacific Bell employees are currently suffering from the corporation’s January, 1991, decision to “contain health-care costs” by forcing us to use the Cigna Private Practice Plan.

We first must select a Cigna primary-care provider, the gatekeeper to Doctor Hell. We then have to get his or her authorization and commonly an evaluation by a Utilization Review Board before treatment is authorized. Specialists must belong to the same Independent Physicians Assn. as the primary-care physician, making our choice of doctors smaller than in an HMO.

After weeks of phone calls, letters, and faxes our treatment is approved. The frustration returns when Cigna denies payment of the bills because they have no record of the primary-care physician’s authorization.

Pacific Bell is self-insured, so how costs are contained through this drawn-out, paperwork-intensive network-type plan is a mystery.

GAIL S. DASH

Granada Hills