Rant #2,768: Who Will Answer?

I am happy--no, I am ECSTATIC--to report that yesterday was a very good day for myself and my family.
 
The mail brought what we had been working for, and hoping for, for many months—
 
Our son finally has his Medicare Part A and Part B in place, and we can finally move on from this nightmare.
 
Since Medicare created a problem for us many months ago, we have worked to rectify this, but along the way, we hit one roadblock after another, not just from Medicare, but from my wife’s former employer and from Social Security.
 
We had trouble receiving the necessary documents to finalize this situation, and I, personally spent days and days, and hours and hours, on the phone trying to explain the urgency of getting this done to those who I spoke to.
 
Well, let’s just say that most of them did not feel the urgency that I did.
 
And the worst thing about it is that they were beginning to use "the pandemic" as a crutch, something I simply do not and will not accept.
 
I have noticed this new way of thinking in other things too, when things don’t get done and people you are dealing with have absolutely no good explanation for why things aren’t getting done.
 
“You have to understand, it’s the pandemic,” they tell me, and it is just such a cliché already at this point in time.
 
I could almost accept it early last year, when we were first hit by this scourge.
 
But we have been in this situation for more than a year and a half at this point in time, and I don’t accept that reasoning anymore, certainly with the way many in our society have cast away what exists as if nothing much every happened to begin with.
 
I don’t know if you have experienced this, but when you use something as a crutch, it kind of tells you flat out that whoever you are dealing with has no explanation for something that has or hasn’t happened, and I ran into this frequently as I tried to get this health insurance for my son.
 
And the governmental agencies … forget about it. They not only use the pandemic as a crutch, it has readily become their go to, end all, reason for everything that they should be doing but for some reason, they haven’t gotten done.
 
For instance, I did whatever I was told to do to get this situation rolling for my son, sent in the proper paperwork, and the paperwork was basically sitting in their office, collecting dust.
 
I sent the material in via accelerated mail, so I knew exactly when my parcel was delivered and that it was actually accepted by someone in the office that I sent it to.
 
After a period of time, when I questioned why nothing was getting done, I was told, “It is the pandemic,” and I was told to send in multiple pages via fax—when was the last time you used a fax machine?
 
Even if I did that, maybe gone to Staples to use a fax machine, with all the papers I would have had to fax over, it would have cost me at least $30 to send over everything.
 
What is more important, I knew for a fact that they had everything I sent them, so why duplicate it all?
 
It had nothing to do with the pandemic. It had to do with something almost worse than that.

It is called  laziness.
 
And that is precisely why I got my local legislator involved, after being turned down by the incumbent county executive, whose staff didn’t use the pandemic as a crutch, but evidently have an illness that makes them not understand something I will call “Politics 101”—
 
"You do not turn down any request made a week prior to Election Day if you are on the ballot and looking for election or re-election.
 
Not only did they turn down my request for help, but they brazenly “pooh-poohed” me when I told them that their actions will force me to vote for the opposition.
 
The woman I spoke to pretty much told me, “Fine, do what you have to do,” and that was that.
 
Funny, her boss lost in a very close race, and perhaps my vote for her shouldn’t have been “pooh-poohed” like it was, right?
 
And the legislator that helped me—really jumped on this and got things done—will get my vote next year when he runs for another term.
 
I won’t forget his staff’s generosity and help. They get what “Politics 101” means.
 
And it has nothing to do with the pandemic.
 
Sp after months and months of work, my son finally has what is rightfully his, what should have been coming to him without blinking an eye, but what I had to fight for in a match that even Muhammad Ali would have been impressed with.
 
I can give myself a pat on the back … but I wonder about those without the wherewithal, and the time, to do what I did to make things right.
 
My son can’t possibly be the only person that fell into the abyss like this, so what do those people do?
 
I can’t worry about the world, but what do they do?
 
And more importantly, why are they—and my son--put in such a position to begin with?
 
And don’t say, “It’s the pandemic.”
 
It is something even more nefarious than that.
 
It is called “red tape,” and it is realky strangling us all, whether we realize it or not.
 
I realized it, and I got things done.
 
What about those who simply can’t do what I did?
 
What happens to them?