CORE Healthcare Plan by UC Berkeley
Hi BPN Community, its enrollment time and looking at how the premiums have gone up, I was wondering if anyone has ever signed up for the $0 premium, CORE Plan. It covers annual health check-up, similar to HSA but higher deductible. I hope I get to see some insight on this from this wonderful and experienced group! thanks, Dana
Nov 7, 2023
Parent Replies
Don't do it! I made the mistake of going with CORE, and I now owe over $2000 after just two months. The insurance basically doesn't cover anything until you hit the $3000 premium, and you just don't know when/if you'll get sick. I got terribly sick for a month, and had to go to urgent care twice -- they did X-rays, tested for Mono, and gave me IV fluids, and that added up to over 2K. If I didn't have insurance at all, believe it or not, it would have been less expensive because then they could have discounted my bills for me. I wish I could go back in time but at least I can advise others not to make the same mistake.
Thank you for posting this: we are in a similar situation during the UC open enrollment period, very disappointed with our current four years with Kaiser (birthing was great) but primary care for both adults and toddler has been lackluster. The bureaucracy and wait times for even the simplest of requests has been astonishingly slow and frustrating and wondering if we’ll get better service through CORE without spending a ton of money out of pocket. The tables they provide with monthly costs and estimates are virtually useless since they can and do often deny preventative testing or reclassify things as non preventative/elective.
It ended up not covering a medication needed by a family member, even though their proposed alternatives (completely different classes of meds) were not suitable per my family member’s doctor. It was just not possible to get any coverage for the needed medication with CORE despite extensive effort on our part and the physician.