This evidentiary record constitutes a formal demand for audit pursuant to California Government Code § 8546.7, which provides that every contract involving expenditure of public funds exceeding $10,000 “shall be subject to the examination and audit of the California State Auditor.” The Legislature specifically intended this provision to apply to the Regents of the University of California. The contracts at issue — including UC’s systemwide agreements with Anthem Blue Cross, Accolade, and Via Benefits (Willis Towers Watson) — each involve public fund expenditures far exceeding this threshold.
The University of California constitutes a “public trust” under California Constitution, Article IX, Section 9. As a self-insured employer, UC is bound by Cal. Code Regs. Title 8, § 15400.2: claim files where future benefits may be payable “shall not” be destroyed.
A prior formal audit request was submitted November 9, 2021, to Chief Compliance & Audit Officer Alexander Bustamante. UC has never responded. This is the second such demand.
All telephone calls documented herein were placed from Arizona. Arizona Revised Statutes §13-3005(A)(1) prohibits only the interception of a wire or electronic communication by a person “to which he is not a party.” Charles A. Harold was a party to all calls documented herein. The recording of those calls by a party to the communication is not prohibited under Arizona law.
Additionally, both institutional recording systems provided their own notice of recording:
All parties to all calls were therefore on notice that the communications were being recorded. Recordings and transcripts are maintained by Charles A. Harold and are available for inspection. Accolade and Medicare maintain their own independent recordings of the same calls.
Accolade is a contracted healthcare intermediary hired by the University of California. The call system identifies itself as: “Thank you for calling Accolade, brought to you by the University of California. Accolade is your new personal health care advocate.” Accolade sits between UC members and the actual insurer (Anthem Blue Cross). During the December 31, 2025 calls, the Accolade Representative had to separately contact Anthem on the back end to update records, confirming that Accolade does not have direct system access to modify insurer records in real time.
This creates a four-layer intermediary structure between the member and his actual coverage: UC (employer/plan sponsor) → Accolade (contracted advocate) → Anthem Blue Cross (insurer) → Medicare (federal primary payer as of January 1, 2026). None of these entities demonstrated real-time data sharing with the others during the calls documented herein.
Medicare is the federal health insurance program administered by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). Charles Harold became eligible for Medicare effective January 1, 2026 (the day after these calls took place).
Representative Identification: Per the instruction of Charles A. Harold, institutional representatives are identified by their institutional role rather than by name, except where the representative identified themselves on the recording and the name is relevant to follow-up or accountability. Specific names are preserved in the recordings maintained by all parties.
| Phone Log Time | Entity | Transcript Filename | Content / Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1:22 PM | Accolade | 2025-12-31_122_pm_Accolade_call_1.txt | Part 1 — Initial contact, coverage problems described, representative offers to call Anthem. Call placed on hold. |
| 1:44 PM | Accolade | 2025-12-31_144_pm_Accolade_Blue_Cross_Call_2.txt | Part 2 — Same call, returns from hold. Anthem rep “Dynasty” on back end. Coordination of benefits updated. 30 business day timeline stated. Call placed on hold again. |
| 2:30 PM | UCOP | No transcript — UC closed for New Year’s holiday | First attempted call to UC. No answer. Phone log documents outbound call. |
| 2:34 PM | UCOP | No transcript — UC closed for New Year’s holiday | Second attempted call to UC. No answer. Phone log documents second outbound call. |
| 2:36 PM | Medicare | 2025-12-31_236_pm_Medicare_Call_1.txt | Medicare Call 1 — Monica Soria. MAJOR: No secondary insurance on file; disappearing enrollment note; Medigap open enrollment window; coercion narrative on Medicare’s recorded line. |
| 3:05 PM | Medicare | 2015-12-31_305_pm_Medicare_call_2.txt (year in filename should be 2025, not 2015 — transcription error) | Medicare Call 2 — Eric Thompson. Confirmed no secondary coverage on file. Confirmed Blue Cross must initiate crossover. 60 business day timeline. |
| 3:23 PM | Accolade | 2025-13-31_323_pm_Accolade_Blue_Cross_Call_3.txt (month in filename should be 12, not 13 — transcription error) | Part 3 — Same Accolade call continues. Claim denials reviewed. Biofeedback miscoding. Out-of-state discovery. Account closure warning. |
| 3:23 PM (cont.) | Accolade | 2025-12-31_323_pm_Accolade_Blue_Cross_3_part_2.txt | Part 4 — Same call continued. Secondary/Medicare supplement discussion. RASC referral. Promise to email claim summaries. Customer satisfaction survey. |
Note on call continuity: The Accolade calls (Parts 1 through 4) represent one continuous call with multiple hold periods. When placed on hold, the recording paused and resumed as separate files. The phone log shows multiple entries because each reconnection after a hold registered as a new call event. The transitions are audible in the recordings.
The following is a complete extraction of all institutional admissions, factual statements by Charles Harold, and evidentiary content from each recorded call, presented in chronological order. Statements are attributed to the speaker. Verbatim quotes from the recordings are presented in italics.
System Identification:
Thank you for calling Accolade, brought to you by the University of California. Accolade is your new personal health care advocate. Benefit coverage and payment are subject to your health plan’s policy at the time medical services are received. Calls are recorded for quality purposes.
Charlie stated he had called Medicare prior to this call, and Medicare told him he did not have Medicare and that they had taken him off Medicare two years ago after putting him on. Charlie stated: “Two years ago, I wasn’t sixty five. That’s not possible.”
Charlie stated he then called UCLA, and UCLA told him: “We have you down here as being covered. You got all the coverage with Blue Cross Blue Shield until, you know, Medicare switches over, but you gotta fill this other form.”
Charlie stated he received a benefits notice in the mail that day (December 31, 2025) showing that retroactively, every service or claim for the last six to eight months, for both himself and his wife, showed none paid.
The Accolade Representative stated: “It could be coordination of benefits.”
The Accolade Representative stated: “Your current Anthem Blue Cross plan with University of California is active and has been active.”
The Accolade Representative offered a mechanical explanation: “The health plan most likely has redacted a lot of the claims because — Anthem, if they paid in advance or paid, versus Medicare paying, then that could be why they’re denying the claims, and asking for the money back.”
The Accolade Representative stated: “It sounds like your coordination of benefits needs to be corrected.”
Charlie stated on the recorded line: “They had my son as being disabled…I’m the one that was disabled, not my son.”
The Accolade Representative responded: “Oh, and it caused all this mess for you. I’m so sorry to hear about that.”
Charlie stated: “Never had secondary insurance ever, not even Aflac, nothing. Always been Blue Cross Blue Shield for my wife and my two kids, but they’re older now. They’re off it for a long time.”
The Accolade Representative stated: “I can definitely, uh, contact Anthem and update them with that coordination of benefits and reflecting that you had no other insurance for this year other than Anthem Blue Cross.”
The Accolade Representative then placed Charlie on hold to call Anthem.
The Accolade Representative returned and stated: “I have Dynasty on the line with me on the back end. She is looking it up now for your denied claims, but the coordination of benefits was updated. She was able to successfully put it into the system for a request for update.”
The Accolade Representative stated: “It does take thirty days, thirty business days for the coordination of benefits to update.”
CRITICAL ADMISSION — The Accolade Representative stated: “It looks like it was not updated. With that being said, it’s now updated. So any denied claims due to coordination of benefits will reprocess automatically.”
This statement constitutes an institutional admission that the coordination of benefits records were incorrect and had not been properly maintained.
Charlie asked how the coordination of benefits could have been changed when he never reported secondary insurance. He stated he signs a verification form every year confirming no secondary insurance. The Accolade Representative responded that it could have been triggered by Medicare data “in some sort of system” or because Anthem initiates verification “whenever they get a claim that’s over a thousand dollars.”
Charlie asked if he was “in limbo.” The Accolade Representative stated: “You have coverage. And especially with the coordination of benefits updating in the system, any claims that do come in now will no longer be denied due to coordination of benefits, and any that were denied will get reprocessed automatically.”
CRITICAL ADMISSION — Nobody Can Explain the Change: Charlie asked who mechanically could have changed his coordination of benefits. The Accolade Representative stated: “I’ve been told that Anthem doesn’t know. The health plan won’t know if you have another health plan. That’s when they start to deny your claims.” She further stated: “I don’t know why they start to deny them other than when they get a thousand dollars or higher on the claim.”
Charlie never reported secondary insurance. Anthem stated they did not know. Yet the change occurred.
No transcripts. UC was closed for the New Year’s holiday. Charles Harold’s phone log documents two outbound calls to UCOP at 2:30 PM and 2:34 PM, demonstrating his attempt to contact UC directly to resolve the coverage issues on the same day he discovered them. This establishes that Charlie attempted to bring UC into the resolution process in real time, on December 31, 2025 — three days before his Medicare eligibility date and during the same afternoon he was discovering the coverage failures on calls with Accolade and Medicare. UC’s holiday closure meant these issues had to wait at least until January 2, 2026 to be addressed by the plan sponsor.
System Identification: Medicare’s automated system announced: “This call may be monitored or recorded for quality and training purposes.”
Charlie stated he is a retired policeman and that his police department has been “screwing up my file for twenty five years.” He stated that UC told him he would be enrolled automatically in Medicare and that Blue Cross Blue Shield would become his supplemental coverage.
Charlie stated he received a statement from Blue Cross that day (December 31, 2025) showing approximately $100,000 in claims from the past year now saying he owed money. Charlie stated: “I haven’t had secondary insurance in forty years.”
Medicare Representative 1 confirmed: “You do have — it says here you’re eligible for original Medicare starting tomorrow, effective tomorrow, which is January first two thousand twenty six.”
Regarding secondary insurance: “That’s correct. I’m not showing anyone. As far as even secondary, I don’t see anything for secondary. So I’m just wondering how they were saying that you have secondary because I don’t see anything there either.”
CRITICAL — THE DISAPPEARING MEDICARE NOTE: Charlie referenced a call from the prior week where a Medicare representative found an enrollment/unenrollment note, including coverage predating his 65th birthday, which would have been impossible. Medicare Representative 1 searched and stated: “I don’t know where she looked at that because I’m not able to find it. I’m looking at enrollment history. There’s only one note on that.”
A note or entry visible to one Medicare representative was not visible to another representative within days. This raises questions about data integrity at CMS or in the data UC/Blue Cross transmitted to CMS.
CRITICAL — CHARLIE’S COERCION NARRATIVE ON MEDICARE’S RECORDED LINE: Charlie stated: “I got hurt in a big fight on duty. They retired me because I cracked my back. So they started paying me tax free for many years. And then one day, somebody calls me from one of those adjuster companies and says, oh, you know, you gotta file for retirement now. I said, no. I’m medically retired. Oh, no. No. We don’t have any record of that because Blue Cross had been hacked and Blue Shield had been hacked. So they had no records of injuries or anything like that. And they said if you don’t apply for regular retirement, we’re gonna pull all your claims. You’re not gonna get anything. So I was over a barrel.”
This statement, made on Medicare’s own recorded line to a disinterested federal employee, documents the coercion narrative: an adjuster company called Charlie, claimed records were lost due to the Blue Cross/Blue Shield data breach, threatened to pull all claims unless he applied for regular retirement, and he complied under duress. These are contemporaneous statements to a disinterested third party with no motive to fabricate.
Medicare Representative 1 advised: “Your Medigap open enrollment period lasts for six months. It starts on the first day of the month that you are both age sixty five or older and enrolled in Medicare Part B. This is a one time period. Once your open enrollment begins, it cannot be stopped, changed, repeated, or altered.”
She stated that after the open enrollment period: “The Medigap insurance company may be allowed to use medical underwriting to deny, delay, or charge more for coverage.”
Charlie’s Medigap open enrollment window began January 1, 2026 and expires approximately July 1, 2026. Given Charlie’s prostate cancer diagnosis, any delay that pushes resolution past this window could result in medical underwriting that uses his cancer to deny, delay, or charge more for supplemental coverage.
CRITICAL ADMISSION BY MEDICARE REPRESENTATIVE 2 (Eric Thompson) — Blue Cross Must Initiate Crossover: Medicare Representative 2 stated: “Unfortunately, Medicare cannot set up crossover records. What would have to happen is Blue Cross would have to contact us and set it up. I do know that it may take up to sixty business days for that crossover to be set up.”
This statement places the obligation for initiating the Medicare crossover squarely on Blue Cross/UC. Medicare cannot do it. Charlie cannot do it. Only Blue Cross can initiate the crossover, and it takes up to 60 business days (approximately three months) once initiated.
Charlie stated on the recorded line that UC told him: “We don’t upload our data all the time. We do batch file uploads every couple of months.” If UC transmits enrollment data to CMS in periodic batch files rather than real-time updates, this explains phantom enrollments, coverage gaps, and timing errors. Any correction UC makes will not reach Medicare for potentially months.
CRITICAL — Claim Denials Not Due to Coordination of Benefits: The Accolade Representative stated that Anthem (Dynasty) looked at Charlie’s claims and found them rejected due to “exclusion for coverage,” not coordination of benefits specifically. Claims in October appeared to have been for “biofeedback training that was denied because it’s not part of the policy.” This suggests coding errors, not just the coordination of benefits issue that was updated.
CRITICAL — Out-of-State Discovery: Charlie described calling UCLA, where they reacted with surprise when he mentioned Arizona: “I said Arizona two times or something. Oh, what do you mean Arizona? So you live in Arizona. Oh, wait a minute. You’re out of state. Hello. You have both my addresses, and they say Arizona for last, you know, ten years. What do you mean do I live in Arizona?” UCLA told him his coverage would need to change to an out-of-state management program through a third-party administrator — despite having his Arizona address on file for approximately ten years.
CRITICAL — Benefit Administration Is UC’s Responsibility: Charlie asked about the “crossover” process. The Accolade Representative stated: “We don’t handle your benefit administration. That would be your employer.” This confirms that Accolade, despite being UC’s contracted “healthcare advocate,” does not handle benefit administration. The crossover from primary to secondary coverage is UC’s responsibility as the employer/plan sponsor.
CRITICAL — Accolade Representatives Are Not Trained on Medicare Transitions: The Accolade Representative stated: “I’m not sure about that because they don’t train us on what is going to be for Medicare and stuff. I just know all this from personal experience too from helping members that are switching from being active to retirement.”
CRITICAL — PROMISE TO EMAIL CLAIM SUMMARIES (UNFULFILLED): The Accolade Representative confirmed Charlie’s email address ([email protected]) and stated: “I’ll use that to have the claim summary emailed to you. And once it is emailed, I’ll call you back.” She provided her callback extension: 8334, identified herself as Shereen. As of February 2, 2026: the claim summary email was never received. The callback was never made. Under HIPAA’s Right of Access rule (45 CFR § 164.524), a covered entity must provide requested records within 30 days. The 30-day deadline has expired.
Charlie’s account of being coerced from disability income to regular retirement — under threat of losing all claims, tied to Blue Cross/Blue Shield being hacked and records being lost — was stated on Accolade’s recorded call system (Part 1) and Medicare’s recorded call system (Call 1, Monica Soria, with the most detailed version including the specific threat to “pull all your claims”). These are contemporaneous statements to disinterested third parties. The consistency of his account across multiple calls to different entities on the same day, with no motive to fabricate, gives these statements significant evidentiary weight as prior consistent statements.
Charlie referenced a call from the prior week where a Medicare representative found an enrollment/cancellation record including coverage predating his 65th birthday. Medicare Representative 1 (Monica Soria) could not locate it: “I don’t know where she looked at that because I’m not able to find it.” Either the note was in a system screen not accessible to all representatives, the note was removed between calls, or the record was altered.
The Accolade Representative, working with “Dynasty” from Anthem, successfully updated the coordination of benefits. She stated it had “not been updated” previously — meaning it was wrong — and denied claims would “reprocess automatically.” This is an institutional admission on a recorded line that the insurer’s records did not reflect reality.
Charlie never reported secondary insurance. He signs a verification form annually confirming no secondary insurance. The Accolade Representative could not explain the change. She stated: “Anthem doesn’t know.” Yet someone or something changed the coordination of benefits to reflect phantom secondary insurance that did not exist.
Medicare Representative 2 (Eric Thompson): “Unfortunately, Medicare cannot set up crossover records. What would have to happen is Blue Cross would have to contact us and set it up.” 60 business day timeline. The obligation is squarely on Blue Cross/UC.
Charlie reported this statement on the Medicare call. If UC transmits enrollment data to CMS in periodic batch files rather than real-time updates, any correction UC makes will not reach Medicare for potentially months.
When Charlie mentioned Arizona during a prior call to UCLA, they reacted with surprise and initiated the out-of-state transfer process — despite having his Arizona address on file for approximately ten years.
As of February 2, 2026 (33 days later): the email was never sent and the callback was never made. The Accolade app now shows “0 Services Available.” Under HIPAA’s Right of Access rule (45 CFR § 164.524), the 30-day response obligation has expired.
Charlie stated his February 2026 prostate cancer surgery on every call — Accolade (Parts 1, 2, and 3), Medicare (Calls 1 and 2). Every entity involved was on notice of the medical urgency. Any failure to resolve coverage issues affecting that surgery was made with full knowledge of the consequences.
Medicare Representative 1 advised that Charlie’s Medigap open enrollment is a six-month, one-time, non-renewable window starting January 1, 2026 (approximately July 1, 2026 expiration). After this window, insurers may use medical underwriting. UC/Blue Cross’s failure to properly set up coverage is consuming this protected enrollment window.
Charlie stated his next paycheck shows insurance deductions reduced from approximately $1,000/month to approximately $200/month, suggesting UC recognized the Medicare transition. But Medicare shows no secondary insurance on file. UC adjusted the money but did not transmit the enrollment data to CMS.
Yet another coding error in the same timeframe as all other record problems. This adds to the pattern of systemic record failures affecting Charles Harold’s account during this period.
| Commitment Made | Promised Date | By Whom | Status 02/02/2026 | Impact |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Email claim summaries to [email protected] | Dec 31, 2025 | Accolade Rep (Shereen) | NOT RECEIVED | Cannot reconcile billing. Potential HIPAA Right of Access violation (45 CFR § 164.524) — 30 day deadline expired. |
| Callback with password once email sent | Dec 31, 2025 | Accolade Rep (Shereen) | NO CALLBACK RECEIVED | No follow-through on acknowledged system errors. |
| Denied claims to reprocess automatically within 30 business days | ~Feb 10, 2026 | Accolade Rep with Anthem rep “Dynasty” | PARTIALLY FAILED | System in mixed state. SMIL collection texts ongoing for $2,725.16. |
| Coordination of benefits updated during call with Anthem | Dec 31, 2025 | Accolade Rep with Anthem rep “Dynasty” | UNVERIFIED — Accolade app shows “0 Services Available” | The “fix” either did not propagate, was overwritten, or the system has entered a third state. |
Summary: Zero of four commitments made on Accolade’s own recorded line on December 31, 2025 have been fully fulfilled as of February 2, 2026. The Accolade app’s display of “0 Services Available” suggests the system is now in a worse state than it was before the December 31 calls.
On December 31, 2025 — three days before Charles Harold turned 65 and became eligible for Medicare, with prostate cancer surgery scheduled for February 2026 — Charles Harold made eight phone calls to four different entities over the course of a single afternoon. In the course of those calls, the following was discovered and documented on institutional recording systems:
The complete recordings of these calls are maintained by Charles A. Harold, by Accolade (as stated in their automated recording notice), and by Medicare (as stated in their automated recording notice). All recordings are available for inspection and are admissible under Arizona’s one-party consent statute (A.R.S. § 13-3005).