Does Medicare Appreciate My Call?

If they do, they're not saying. Unlike the hold messages you hear when you're waiting to speak to, say, an airline representative, the little messages that interrupt the on-hold music all seem like variations on a theme -- "Hang up, check online, we don't really want to talk to you." I heard those messages plenty of times yesterday, because I spent a good hour and a half on hold in the course of a three-hour marathon of Medicare fun.

I'm on hold right now.

Apparently the supervisors don't want to talk to me either, because every time I ask my current Medicare buddy a question, he has to go check with someone. But when I asked to speak to that person directly, he put me on hold (what a surprise) and came back with a different answer than the one I had been challenging.

It's easy to see why people hate big government, when this is the face it wears. Even though I've spoken to some genuinely pleasant people, the long hold times, the way no one gives me the same answer twice, the agony of starting back at square one with every person I speak to -- this is a public relations fiasco. Not to mention that the stress of dealing with all this is enough make a healthy person sick.