Medicare Madness

So on November 1 I will officially become a Medicare recipient. I'll let you know in a few months whether I think that is good or not. But I wish I had a dollar for every page of "information" I have received about Medicare in the past six months! Since someone, somewhere wisely decided to make it illegal for insurance companies to use telemarketing for the purpose of hawking their Medigap programs, my mailbox began to fill up with unsolicited envelopes containing letters soliciting my request for them to send me information! You can reread that sentence -- I'll wait, because it may sound wrong, but it is exactly what happened. The aforementioned wise person apparently also made it illegal to just go ahead and mail the information without my prior permission.

About a month after all these insurance company mailings started arriving, the company from which I am retired with full benefits started sending random, legal-speak letters about things such as Assigned Coverage, Part B Premium Payment Assistance, and How to Sign up for Medicare (even though the company later signed me up themselves!) Every day that something new arrived, I became more and more confused. I had no idea what was about to happen.

THEN one day I received a letter from the Social Security Administration saying that based on my 2007 tax return, I would be required to pay an additional premium for Medicare Part B -- a little less than $40 would be added to the basic premium of little less than $100 per month!What a minute, 2007? I was laid off in 2009! Why should I pay extra now, when I have no job?!?
The SSA website was ready with an answer. If I had a "life-changing event" such as a "dramatic reduction in income," I would have to prove it and they would reconsider. A phone number was given to call to get this accomplished. I encountered the usual automated menu and pressed the number associated with Medicare. There was a recording which described what Medicare is -- period. There were no options for getting a customer service associate to take my information. Exasperated, I grabbed my documents and drove downtown to the public office.

THREE hours later, after being grudgingly interviewed by a surly government worker; after being assigned to a "specialist" because of the complexity of my mission; after explaining to the so-called specialist why her computer "wouldn't take the information;" after watching several citizens with hearing problems or intellectual issues be cruelly disrespected; I left not really knowing if i had accomplished anything, despite the fact that I was told I was "all set, but it wouldn't take effect until next year." What?!?!?!? Fortunately, something worked correctly; I received a letter less than 10 days later saying my premium was changed back to the basic.

Call me crazy, but I would think that, given the target audience of Medicare correspondence and processes, there would be an effort to simplify things for those of us who are heading into the autumn of our years. If this is any example of how well the government "runs" a 75-year-old program, let's give a whole lot more thought to the wisdom of a public option for healthcare insurance! And I will remind you that I am a Democrat -- a Democrat with sense enough to recognize a problem when I see one.