“The Health Centre wishes to advise that since July 12th 2006 we have seen an increase in the number of patients being required to pay $1,000 extra when using their LOJ swipe cards to purchase prescription drugs. The explanation given by LOJ is that this amount is the $1,000 stated in the plan as deductible in order for an enrollee to access Major Medical benefits after the initial allocation of $4,000 is used up. LOJ further explained that an error in their electronic claim authorization software (swipe card system), caused this payment to be missed for some patients. They corrected the error on July 12.
Notwithstanding the above explanation, there have also been cases in which the amount computed for payment by the patient exceeds the sum of the deductible and the co-payment. We believe that this is an error and we have alerted LOJ, and requested that the correction be made. In the meantime, patients should submit a claim to LOJ for any excess payment over the $1,000 deductible and the 20% co-payment.
In order to minimize any inconvenience we suggest that until July 31 when the current health plan expires, persons filling prescriptions using the LOJ card should take along an extra $1,000 to meet the additional payment. We use the opportunity to apologize for the inconvenience this will cause, however, it must be emphasized that this situation is entirely the result of action taken by LOJ. The change was not communicated to the Health Centre.
We continue to investigate the matter and will endeavor to keep patients updated”.