Great-West Life Group Benefits Insurance Reviews

This is about "Drug Insurance", which is not available in the Product type. The Ontario Pension Board's Ontario Public Service Pension Plan drug coverage is supposed to be 90% but Great-West Life Assurance has applied a $1,000/year limit on a specific drug. The information available from the Ontario Pension Board and from the Great-West Life Assurance's GroupNet websites state that the drug coverage is 90% without any exception. Great-West Life will not provide the insurance policy, only a sketchy self-excusing letter explaining the limit using Health Canada and other excuses to deny payment for copayment coverage for a drug I have been taking for at least 13 years at the same dosage. My doctor submitted a form requested by Great-West Life Assurance in which the reason for prescribing and the dosage was stated, which Great-West Life Assurance rejected. Great-West Life Assurance is dishonest. Ultimately, this will probably be settled in small claims court. It isn't just about the small amount of money involved, it is the principle that the information presented by the Ontario Pension Board and Great-West Life Assurance state specific coverage, which is not being honoured and, if there is an exception, that information is not provided, and the supposed exception to 90% coverage is for a different condition for the prescribed drug. The Ontario Treasury Board Secretariat is a party to the insurance policy agreement and will be named as a party in a small claims court lawsuit. If this is resolved in small claims court, it will cost Great-West Life Assurance and the taxpayer of Ontario a lot more money than the outstanding unreimbursed amount.

I have health insurance through work (AHS), applied for short-term disability and got denied. Have all the documentation from physician and specialist but yet I was denied. Why are we even paying premiums? Those adjusters don't even have medical backgrounds yet they decide how an insurance is judged!

I recently was really sick on a trip to Cuba, I am from Canada. My workplace has "travel assistance" coverage through Great West Life. I read through their benefit booklet before I left and felt assured that they would have the resources to help in an emergency. This is a quote from our benefits booklet. "This program provides medical assistance through a worldwide communications network that operates 24Hours a day. The Network Locates medical services and obtains Great West Life's approval of covered services, when required as a result of a medical emergency" They talk a good game, sounds pretty sophisticated, and sounds like they have resources to help. Unfortunately, I was violently ill in Cuba. We are all given an emergency travel assistance card, so I tried calling the number on the card. It didn't work. And they had a special number just for when you are in Cuba. There was also some fine print that mentioned you may need to dial "00" instead of 1 if you are in another country. I tried this, this also didn't work. So then I tried dialling "00" plus "1". And it worked! I got through. Now I will certainly get some help....not so. They had absolutely no medical assistance for me at all. I had to go and find my own...in Cuba....while violently ill. The customer service rep was like a cold robot. They didn't seem interested at all in providing help. I'm asking for help and all the guy wants is my address, my phone number and postal code. Another thing is, you need to call the number they give you first or they may not pay your claim. They then give improper instructions for dialling outside the country. So your claim can be denied. Highly unethical company, to the point of straight-up fraudulent in my opinion. We need stronger laws in Canada for this type of behaviour.

Calling in to their customer support will guarantee you to wait on the phone, as their call centre seems both understaffed and underqualified. Also the call centre agents are oblivious to my benefits and insisted I contact the HR of the company I am working for - what is their customer support centre's purpose then?

Website provides minimal information regarding group benefits plan to see what my coverage is. Coverage is pretty terrible for the money, some of the worst that I've seen from any group plans so far. Dental claims are often delayed or denied with no clear explanation. To give them credit, getting a pair of subscription glasses went moderately well, but even that somehow took longer than 4 weeks to process.

I was an employee at GWL. As soon as they learned my wife required surgery, I was terminated. We lost all benefits.

Pathetic.

Paid my dues for over 7 years for employee benefits. There rep came to our company and assured us and I quote "Don't worry, if anything happens we'll take care of you! No problems."

Over this 7 year period they recieved over 16, 800.00 dollars on my behalf.

In 2016 I was in a bad car accident and ended up with severe post concussion syndrome. They did everything they could to deny me and left me in the dust.

So I lost my 26 dollar an hour job because of my condition and couldn't drive a truck anymore. Now I survive on a meager provincial disability stipend as I can't work yet.

Don't do business with these people, they are your typical greedy self-centered corporation. They lie and don't deliver what they promise.

I hope you spent my 16K on something nice for yourselves...

Throughout the years I have had to deal with them for one claim or another. Filled out paperwork for coverage on glasses, my primary insurance company refunds the money no problem and I submit the remaining amount with receipt and paperwork. And they claim I need to fill out more. This is not the first time I've done this either, seems every time I've dealt with them they change information needed or claim they need more. Funny how it's only their company I have frustration with. I've had coverage throughout my 28 years of work and never had issues with any other companies. A company I worked for changed to to them for insurance and because I hate them so much I quit and found another job. I refuse to have them as my primary insurer, I cannot help who my wife's company has but I can sure prevent my pay to go towards them.

My company terminated the group insurance with GWL on January 31, 2016. All claims served and sent before this date were supposed to be accepted and paid.
My wife's eye glasses were bought on December 15, 2015 and after claim went through here insurance, it was submitter to GWL (sent on January 15). And they refused to pay it because they artificially delayed the claim processing up to February 9th! How ridiculous!
Beware of this bunch of scammers.

I have Green Shield through my employer and GWL through husband's employer . My claims are processed and paid in a total of 3 days with Green Shield. GWL is a totally different story. It takes about 2 weeks for them to process the claim and another 3 weeks to send out the refund :( I pay for my services with a credit card expecting to have reimbursement before the credit card bill is due but with GWL that never happens. Terrible, terrible service. I wish employers would boycott them and use other insurance providers as there is absolutely no excuse for such lack of time limit when processing/refunding claims.

I unfortunately have Great West Life as my benefits provider through my company and have had a terrible experience with them. They are consistently slow at processing your claim, and often taking weeks at a time. They have also on numerous occasions screwed up my claims and have repeatedly contact me for information that I have already provided them. It is not easy to resubmit an entire claim if you have already sent them the original copies. I've also had to deal with 3 separate individuals on one claim only to have to re-explajn my claim to each of them. This is a waste of my time and money. My husband has Sun Life and I have never had issues with them. They are fast and efficient at all times and provide detailed information of your plan and claims on their website where great West life seems like an archaic website.