Minnesota's MNsure ACA system is about to take a big hit, along with Blue Cross.

There's going to be trouble brewing in the Great White North this week. Here's what's happening:

Last year, in October, my wife decided to switch from the Blue Cross ACA insurance plan she had that year to a different Blue Cross plan. So, she did her research and came up with a new Silver plan that fit her needs better and signed up. That part went fine. At the end of December, she got her new card and it has been honored at her providers just fine.

Just one thing: Blue Cross could not get its billing and payment act together in time to get paid for the January premium. We kept getting notices that the bill would be arriving soon. Then, those notices stopped coming. My wife tried calling the customer service number, but wait times at Blue Cross were always over an hour, and she never really got an answer to her questions, which were:

When will I get my bill for the January premium?
Will you be using the old EFT agreement to collect the premium?

On February 1, with the January premium still not billed or collected through EFT, she called again. This time, there was a recorded message presented on the customer service phone number saying that they'e be collecting the January premium soon, if you were signed up for EFT, and sending bills to those who weren't. Again, wait times were even longer than an hour, so she gave up. I had warned my wife that they'd probably just take both the January and February payments from the checking account without notice. So, we made sure that there was enough money in there for both the January and February premiums, ready to go and not to be touched for other things.

Sure enough, when she checked the account this morning, as she does each morning, both payments had been taken via EFT overnight. Not a problem for us, because I knew that would probably happen. But...and this is huge: There was no advance notice of the EFT withdrawals about to be made, as there always had been in the past. The money was just gone.

For many people, checking accounts are often running close to empty. They count on knowing how much money will be taken and on what date it will be taken. Blue Cross's failure to notify its customers that two months of premiums would be collected last night is going to result in a lot of overdrafts and serious, immediate problems for many, many people.

It's early today. People don't know yet that two months health insurance premiums have been collected. No notice was given of the date that would happen. My prediction? A lot of people are about to discover that their checking accounts are overdrawn today or tomorrow. The wait times for Blue Cross customer service calls are going to approach infinity.

This will be in the news in Minnesota tonight or tomorrow. I'm just glad I made sure the money was there and ready to be transferred. I've been concerned about this and, sure enough, they just did both months' EFT transfers without notice. The public opinion explosion is about to happen.

And yes, I realize that premiums have to be paid. That's not an issue. Blue Cross didn't take their delays in processing seriously enough, though, and captured the funds without notice of the date when they'd be captured. The fallout is going to be major.

Watch for the gigantic mushroom cloud of consumer outrage on the horizon.