What is my recourse if alberta health cancels my coverage without letting me know
My husband and I are snowbirds living fulltime in an RV. We normally spend 5.5 months going to/from Arizona. We own an RV lot in Alberta and spend our spring, summer & fall there with the exception of 1 to 2 weeks visiting our daughters and grandson in Manitoba. The only time we have deviated from this pattern was in the fall/winter of 2014 / 15 when we spent the winter in BC in order to travel and spend the summer of 2015 visiting the Yukon and Alaska. When my husband retired in June 2004, he asked Alberta Health Care how long he had to stay in Alberta in order to maintain coverage and was told he was only required to stay one day per year. He mistakenly assumed this was still the case and so we never informed Alberta Health Care nor Applied for an exemption to allow us to travel over a 2 year period (as we have since learned). Alberta Health sent us a letter in June 2016 informing us that our coverage was cancelled effective May 1, 2016. We subsequently had to reapply after a 3 month waiting period. We were also informed that we would now be subjected to an audit every 2 years to prove our residency status in Alberta. We sent the first audit back to ABHC Apr 18/18 with all the questions answered appropriately and honestly that we had complied with the rules. On the morning of June 4th, I had a prescription to fill at the pharmacy. The pharmacist was not able to fill the prescription as she was informed that our Alberta Blue Cross and Alberta Health Care coverage had been cancelled. She called Alberta Health Care and was informed we had been cancelled effective MAY 31, 2018. Nobody at Alberta Health Care advised us in any way, shape or form about the cancellation. I even had a Diagnostic Breast Ultrasound done on June 1, 2018 without realizing I was not covered. My husband & I telephoned ABHC as soon as I got home from the pharmacy and talked to a front line officer, who after listening to our story and being on hold for a long 15 minutes, advised us that she would have the Manager that was taking care of our case (Tracy) call us back. She did so and she insisted that we lied on one of the questions on the form about being outside the province no more than 183-215 days because she saw a picture social media of me with the RV in the Yukon (my cover picture on Facebook). Of course that was a picture from our travels to Yukon and Alaska in summer of 2015. Once I clarified that, she reactivated our account backdated to May 31/18. Tracy also apologized for not getting back to us the previous week to inform us of the cancellation. The stress we have endured with all this has been tremendous on both of us. At this point we are feeling harassed. Do we have any recourse?
