Medicare
This is what I want to know. Who the f@(k calls someone at home at 7:30 in the f%$king morning. I mean really!
My husband's family has been having big problems with Medicare. His father needs oxygen to breathe at night, and both his parents have ongoing health issues, all of which are very expensive, and for some reason Medicare has decided to deny them benefits. This is because (no surprise here) of an error that MEDICARE itself has made with their records. Medicare freely acknowledges that it is their error, and that the error has been straightened out, and then continues to deny them benefits. My husband has been to the Medicare office several times in an effort to fix this, and is not getting very far. So today we finally got a call. At seven thirty!
Why does this bug me? Because we could so easily have missed it. My older daughter called last night after I had gone to sleep. The phone rang, she left a message, and I never heard a thing. At 7:30, chances are good that people will be asleep. If my husband had been home alone, he certainly would have been. Or maybe a family is in a rush to get their kids out the door and has no time to answer the phone. Maybe they're in the shower. And as you may know from dealing with the government in other capacities, there is no way to return a phone call directly to anyone in the Medicare office. You have to go through their elaborately recorded phone triage, with its endless messages of buttons to push, only to end up with some person you have never spoken with before, who has no clue about your particular situation, who says they will fix it and then voila! It doesn't get fixed.
I suppose I should be happy that Medicare was awake and on the job at 7:30. I'm certainly happy I was able to get to the phone. And if it turns out this is finally, really fixed, for once and for all, then I will be ecstatic.
My husband's family has been having big problems with Medicare. His father needs oxygen to breathe at night, and both his parents have ongoing health issues, all of which are very expensive, and for some reason Medicare has decided to deny them benefits. This is because (no surprise here) of an error that MEDICARE itself has made with their records. Medicare freely acknowledges that it is their error, and that the error has been straightened out, and then continues to deny them benefits. My husband has been to the Medicare office several times in an effort to fix this, and is not getting very far. So today we finally got a call. At seven thirty!
Why does this bug me? Because we could so easily have missed it. My older daughter called last night after I had gone to sleep. The phone rang, she left a message, and I never heard a thing. At 7:30, chances are good that people will be asleep. If my husband had been home alone, he certainly would have been. Or maybe a family is in a rush to get their kids out the door and has no time to answer the phone. Maybe they're in the shower. And as you may know from dealing with the government in other capacities, there is no way to return a phone call directly to anyone in the Medicare office. You have to go through their elaborately recorded phone triage, with its endless messages of buttons to push, only to end up with some person you have never spoken with before, who has no clue about your particular situation, who says they will fix it and then voila! It doesn't get fixed.
I suppose I should be happy that Medicare was awake and on the job at 7:30. I'm certainly happy I was able to get to the phone. And if it turns out this is finally, really fixed, for once and for all, then I will be ecstatic.
posted by Sarah at 8:15 AM
4 Comments:
Sarah, I fear I have been a terrible influence on you. LOL I am so sorry that you're fighting with government bureaucracy. It is mind boggling how inefficient a process can be. I hope it really is fixed and that Nabil's parents get the care they need. If you need to vent out loud, call me.
Well, I'm not sure exactly what you mean by that (I'd love for you to elaborate) but I'm going to take it as a compliment, and hereby thank you.
They didn't call first thing... they were most likely calling from a completely different time-zone, probably the last call of the day!
Now there's a thought.
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