Dual Healthcare Coverage issue

[joe332]

What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)?

I live in NJ. I have health coverage under my current employer which I currently use as my primary health care, and have had for 3 years. Last year, my wife got medical coverage at her job and added me to it. Originally, I could not get a coverage card from them because they put my name in wrong and it took forever to get it fixed. During that time I had an urgent medical issue which required me to go to my doctor twice, and a specialist twice. Since I didn't have my card or a policy number I used my primary health insurance only (they cover both things). Also, my primary care doctor is not covered by the secondary insurance I have through my wife.

Since this time the health care plan issue has been resolved, but they have my effective coverage date as the original date my wife signed up (which pre-dates my medical issue). To date,I have not made any claims with this secondary insurance. Now I am worried that if I report I have secondary coverage to my primary health insurance and they find out it was technically in effect during the time I had to go to the doctor (those 4 appoints came over the course of about 10 days) that I will be in a lot of trouble.

At the same time,I am concerned about getting into any more trouble by going back to my doctor for further treatment if I get sick again before I add this policy to my primary policy. Does anyone know what kind of trouble I am in (if any), or how to resolve this?

[ecmst12]

You didn't use coverage which was available to you and you used other coverage which was primary. Why on earth would this cause any sort of problem? If you had used only the SECONDARY coverage, that might have caused a problem, but there is no issue with your situation as posted. You could even submit the bills for your out of pocket copays etc to the secondary coverage now, to see if they cover anything. They might not, but it's worth a try.