My wife was in a bad accident a couple of months back so I've been getting up to speed on the shortcomings of our health cover. I've been referred to our policy documentation more times in the last few weeks and been caught out by what I would call deliberate vagueness. The Dublin Dental University Hospital isn't recognised as a public or private hospital for one!
The most recent issue I've had was trying to determine what's covered by their Fixed Price Procedure list. Depending on the consultant and hospital they may or may not cover the procedure but they won't tell you that until after you have paid for the consultation and know what the procedure might be. They won't provide a copy of this document either so that you can make an informed decision. So you could well pay for a consultation and then find that your insurance won't cover the follow-up as they don't cover the hospital the consultant uses. You could potentially have to seek out another consultant in a different hospital, pay for the consultation again and hope it is covered in the hospital they choose. Thankfully it hasn't happened to us yet but that was luck rather than through any deliberate action but we still have two more rolls of that dice.
This seems very unfair to me and is it legal? They claim it is commercially sensitive and not available to the public but it seems to me a convenient way to be able to add and remove procedures from cover without any visibility and certainly makes it more difficult to compare policies. Is this normal practice to have such a list and not share it? How are you supposed to know which consultant in which hospital to use if this practice exists?
The most recent issue I've had was trying to determine what's covered by their Fixed Price Procedure list. Depending on the consultant and hospital they may or may not cover the procedure but they won't tell you that until after you have paid for the consultation and know what the procedure might be. They won't provide a copy of this document either so that you can make an informed decision. So you could well pay for a consultation and then find that your insurance won't cover the follow-up as they don't cover the hospital the consultant uses. You could potentially have to seek out another consultant in a different hospital, pay for the consultation again and hope it is covered in the hospital they choose. Thankfully it hasn't happened to us yet but that was luck rather than through any deliberate action but we still have two more rolls of that dice.
This seems very unfair to me and is it legal? They claim it is commercially sensitive and not available to the public but it seems to me a convenient way to be able to add and remove procedures from cover without any visibility and certainly makes it more difficult to compare policies. Is this normal practice to have such a list and not share it? How are you supposed to know which consultant in which hospital to use if this practice exists?