One advantage of getting old, or at least so I thought, was the ability to take advantage of the Social Security Administration Medicare Program. The advantage is there, to be sure, the taking thereof can be a bit challenging.
Approaching age 65, I contacted the SSA to get set up for Medicare. Medicare, as it turns out, is available for just about everyone. Everyone, as it turns out, doesn’t include people with kidney cancer and/or on dialysis, whom I assume, must either be rich (they won’t be for long, dialysis isn’t cheap) or must “get their affairs in order” (because kidney cancer is almost always fatal), but for the rest of us, there are several options for little or no cost, all of which provide little or no coverage. Actually, the coverage isn’t too bad, as coverage goes, as long as you select wisely from those several options.
The application process was interesting, to say the least. I received my Medicare Card, in “due course,” after filling out a “short” on-line questionnaire (twice, because the site went down during the first filling), making a phone call (three actually, because no one was available for call one or two), and waiting for several weeks (apparently what constitutes “due course”). My card indicates that I am enrolled in Medicare Part A and Medicare Part B. I am not enrolled in Medicare Part D or Medicare Part C, if there is a Part C, which I don’t think there is, but there might have been at one time or else why would Part D be Part D instead of Part C, unless the D stands for “Donut Hole,” which I understand is the most important part of Part D, and resembles a “black hole,” into which everything that falls gets no prescription coverage at all.
In any case, because of Part D and probably because there is no Part C and because Part A and Part B don’t cover a lot of stuff, and the stuff they do cover has limitations and “co-pays,” I decided to also get “supplemental” insurance from the HMO that had been insuring my company for years. I applied and was forwarded, in due course, two (no I don’t know why) complete applications packages with complete information packages and supporting packages from the Social Security Administration, which, of course, I had already received directly from the Social Security Administration. I filled out one application carefully and completely, including all the appropriate information and making all the appropriate choices, only to discover “in due course” that I had been sent the wrong application.
So, in due course, I was forwarded two more application packages (the correct ones this time) with two more complete information packages and, of course, two more supporting packages from the Social Security Administration. I filled out one application carefully and completely, including all the appropriate information and making all the appropriate choices, and “in due course” was accepted into the program; I assume because I don’t have kidney cancer and/or am not on dialysis, but mostly because they are “happy to provide coverage” as long as they are required by law to do so and I pay the premiums. Consequently, in due course, I received my complete enrollment package, including the complete information package, twenty pages worth of information cleverly condensed to 300 pages of text and graphics, and, of course, a complete supporting package from the Social Security Administration.
I should mention that my enrollment package also included the HMO “Abridged Formulary for Part D Prescription Coverage.” The partial list of over 3000 prescription medications that are provided for a “small co-pay” to “plan participants.” Included are any all prescriptions that can be obtained inexpensively by the HMO and are also unlikely to be prescribed by the HMO doctors. Or perhaps it just seems that way.
05/12/11
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