joec, I have a Blue Shield of CA Platinum PPO from Covered CA. It took a l-o-o-ong time to get my membership card, but so far, I am happy with it and they have paid 90% of the bill for one “expensive test” so far in 2014 and all my current providers take the plan. I just found out that Sharp Rees Stealy is not on their provider list (not sure about Sharp hospitals) when I tried to access care in a local Sharp Rees Stealy Urgent Care clinic a few weeks ago on a weekend. They sent me to a nearby “US Healthworks” urgent care clinic who treated my minor injury just fine and I’m all healed up now.
IIRC, Sharp Platinum EPO was going to be ~$125 per month more for me and I needed national provider access, due to being on the road several weeks per year. Blue Shield of CA belongs to the BCBS National Provider Directory in the 48 contiguous states and even worldwide:
Absent needed emergency care while out of county, Sharp EPO only covers the bills of providers within their EPO …. all located in San Diego County.[/quote]
Thanks for sharing…and confirming what I found out since in December, Anthem actually listed them as a provider as well.
We wanted to use the Sharp Rees-Stealy hospitals (and also Rady’s Children) since my kids have been going there since birth and Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield just didn’t offer them at all…so we switched.
Glad to hear you’ve been happy with it so far and your current medical professionals still takes your Blue Shield.
Just hate dealing with any issues with the Blue companies since it takes so long to get anyone on the phone.
