Woodland senior loses wife and health insurance in same month – Daily Democrat

Eighty-year-old Bill Findley (left) and brother Craig Findley. Bill recently lost his wife and learned he would have to find a new healthcare provider after Dignity Health canceled its contract with Aetna. “I don’t want to leave Dignity Health, I’m 80 years old,” Findley emphasizes. “I just lost my wife and all these things are piling up and it’s very frustrating.” (Gerardo Zavala/Daily Democrat)

Bill Findley is 80 years old, recently lost his wife and found he would have to find a new healthcare provider after Dignity Health and Aetna terminated their contracts earlier this month.

“I don’t want to leave Dignity Health,” he emphasized. “And now I have to look for another provider. I just lost my wife and all these things are piling up and it’s very frustrating. I have been at that hospital there all my life, I was born and raised here.”

Findley worked for and retired from Mobil Chemical, a Woodland plastics plant owned by Exxon Mobile that closed several years ago. He gets his insurance through his retirement plan through Exxon Mobile and has tried to speak to representatives but has not been able to get through to them.

“I’m just kind of up in the air,” Findley emphasized. “I have congestive heart failure, the onset of (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) and now I have to look for someone else to take care of it.”

He also contacted Dignity Health and Aetna, but was told “it’s up to you” with no directions or other options presented.

“I would like to continue seeing my doctors,” Findley asserted. “I’ve built a relationship with them… and I can’t imagine going to someone who doesn’t know me, doesn’t have any data or anything like that. I think it’s a stab in the back for me. I don’t know what else to say.”

“I’ve got enough on my mind without having to worry about this.”

Findley has signed continuity of care forms to be allowed to complete some upcoming Dignity Health appointments, but he doesn’t know what to do next.

Julia Findley, his sister-in-law, said his only other option would be Kaiser, which means he would have to travel to Sacramento or Vacaville for appointments, something she said is not possible because he cannot drive.

“I work with my daughter,” Findley said, referring to Lori Brooks. “She helped me a lot in figuring out what to do, but you just can’t get answers out of people. I went to Dignity Health and spoke to a supervisor and she confused me even more than when I went in there.

“You work your whole life to achieve these things and then this happens.”

Findley is one of thousands of Yolo County residents looking for new healthcare providers after Dignity Health canceled its contracts with two major health insurers, Aetna and Partnership HealthPlan.

The decisions came after weeks of negotiating reimbursement rates.

For more information about Dignity Health and Aetna, visit www.worthhealth.org/aetna.

Yolo County Board Supervisor Lucas Frerichs, District 2, said the board has been closely monitoring this issue, particularly the contract termination with the nonprofit health insurer Partnership HealthPlan, which serves thousands of Medi-Cal patients.

“It is deeply troubling to hear that 17,000 people, who are among Yolo County’s most vulnerable residents, are being affected by this,” he said, referring only to Partnership HealthPlan members. “For example, we’ve heard reports from Sutter-Davis that because of this situation, the emergency department there is being overrun with people who are unable to have a primary care physician.”

He’s also heard reports of people spending hours on the phone with Partnership HealthPlan trying to find a new doctor.

While there are other healthcare providers in Yolo County, such as Communicare, Winters Health Care and Elica Health Center in West Sacramento, Frerichs argued it is unlikely they will have enough capacity to transfer 17,000 people.

“If people qualify for medical care, they probably have a very low income, so they probably already have a lot on their plate,” Frerichs argued. “It is completely unfair to have to spend an inordinate amount of time understanding the system and ensuring they have adequate health care.”

Frerichs believes this could all have been avoidable and that both sides should have come up with a solution, such as extending a short-term contract for a month or more while they continue negotiations. That’s why the board sent a letter to Dignity Health and Partnership on Thursday, April 11, encouraging the two to find a solution.

“We are actually hearing informally from both of them that they are still actively negotiating, but no progress has been made,” Frerichs emphasized.

Additionally, the board sent a letter to the California Health and Human Services Agency in an effort to get a state-appointed mediator to help broker a deal. Frerichs said he knows the agency has reached out, but isn’t sure if a mediator has been appointed yet.

To read more about this topic, visit dailydemocrat.com/2024/04/09/dignity-health-terminates-contracts-with-two-health-insurers-leaves-patients-in-healthcare-limbo.