I have a very, very busy day
today.
At least some of it has to do with matters related to the interim health insurance that I was forced to get until my time comes to qualify for Medicare, but more about that later.
First off, I have a ton of writing to do today, which really isn’t a bad thing in the long run.
One of the things I have to do is to write this very Rant you are reading, so that is a good thing.
I also have to tend to my “Where the Action is—Yesterday and Today … and Tomorrow” site on Facebook, which (get ready for the plug) is a nice paean to the old rock and roll variety series created by Dick Clark in the mid 1960s. Go to https://www.facebook.com/groups/598790963991601 to see what that is all about.
Try it, you’ll like it!
And I also have to do a ton of writing for my little side job, because as they say, my ship came in late yesterday afternoon, and I have to take care of that today.
What I mean is that the final set of fiscal 2021 sales figures finally came in from what is called the Army & Air Force Exchange Service (AAFES), which runs exchanges—military department stores—that are shopped by service men and their families, as well as military retirees and others. AAFES runs the exchanges that are on Army and Air Force installations.
This is a more than $14-billion-a-year industry—along with exchanges run by the other services and the commissaries, the military supermarkets, which are run throughout the services by the Defense Commissary Agency (DeCA)—but few know about it, as in the entire military scheme of things, it is but a grain of sand compared to the mega-billions spent on the military and the defense of this country each and every year.
It is probably one of the myriad of reasons that I was not hired during all those months after my company went under, because few had the interest in hiring a writer of 20-plus-years of experience covering a field they never heard of—and they were not inclined to find out and learn about this field.
Oh well, their loss (really my loss, but I like to tell myself otherwise).
I received the final total for AAFES late yesterday, and I have to work on the chart today, as well as on some peripheral stories on this information, so I will get on it a little later … but first, let me tell you what else I have to do today that has nothing to do with this, but has all to do with this idiotic “interim” insurance that I have.
Later this morning, I have to get my allergy shots, which I have done once a month each and every month since I was about 15 years old.
I have always gone to a local doctor or local site to get the shots, sometimes so close to where I am that I could walk to the site without breaking a sweat.
That was then, this is now …
When my wife retired, my son and I, and of course, my wife, lost her health insurance that we all received from her employer.
It wasn’t much of a problem for my wife, who dovetailed right into Medicare when she retired and went right into Social Security as someone who was 65 years of age (if you looked at her, you would swear that she was 20 years younger than that).
Anyway, this left my son and I in a lurch, mainly me, because my son could now dovetail himself into Medicare Disability, something he could have used before if he needed to but never had the need to use until now.
This presented its own set of problems, which took several months to fix, but his health insurance is now where it should be (I think).
But I was the problem.
Even though I was forced to retire before my wife, and am receiving Social Security, I do not qualify for Medicare yet because I am too young, not yet 65 (yes, I am younger than my wife is).
I have a five-month gap between her leaving her job, me losing the insurance from that job, and me being able to get Medicare in April, the month I turn 65.
So what is a poor boy like me to do?
Well, due to this wonderful program dubbed “Obamacare,” I am forced to get health insurance—some type of health insurance—to fill in the five-motnh crack until Medicare.
In New York State, you go onto the "New York State of Health" site, you pick one plan that sounds suitable, you get it approved, the state agrees to give you a stipend each month to help you pay for your insurance, and everything is hunky dory (I am simplifying all of this; if you are a regular reader here, you know that it isn’t as simple as all that).
So I have this insurance, which is really a Band-Aid until I get Medicare, and after going through a horror show in getting everything up to snuff with it, I swore that I would use it as sparingly as I could until I was able to get Medicare—and that is something that I have done.
However, when I have used it here and there for various things, it has pushed my health care expenses up greatly, with my various payments to various doctors often many times as much as I had been paying under my wife’s plan.
I know that individual plans are never as good as group plans, but when your salary is pretty much an iota of what it was when you were working full-time, it makes it that much harder to pay out all of this money.
There are many “perks” to this horrible plan that I have, and one of them is that I cannot go to my usual medical office to get my monthly allergy shots.
I found this out abruptly when all of this began last year, where the place I had been getting the shots for years literally turned me down flat, and told me where I had to go to get them.
The place I had been getting shots for years is about two or three miles away from where I live … the place that I have had to get the shots for the past few months is more than 20 miles away from my house!
To put it more bluntly, I live in eastern Nassau County, literally a hop, skip and a jump away from Suffolk County, but because of the insurance that I have, I have to get my shots in Western Nassau County, a hop, skip and a jump away from Eastern Queens in New York City.
Explain how that benefits me!
And the coup de grace on the entire matter is that I have been forced to pay four times as much for the shots as I have in the past.
No, you can’t win here, you just can’t.
Is it any wonder that I am counting the days—a lucky 13 more—until I can drop this insurance and move right into Medicare?
As I have said many, many times, if you are working, if you have not lost your job like I did, do not look a gift horse in the mouth.
You are darn lucky to have your job, because you have no clue what it is to be in a position like I am in, no clue at all.
So let me end this Rant right now, because I have so many things to do today, including using up my gas driving to get my shots, gas that cost me over $50 to fill up my tank yesterday.
The pain, the pain!
Have a great weekend, and speak to you again on Monday.
At least some of it has to do with matters related to the interim health insurance that I was forced to get until my time comes to qualify for Medicare, but more about that later.
First off, I have a ton of writing to do today, which really isn’t a bad thing in the long run.
One of the things I have to do is to write this very Rant you are reading, so that is a good thing.
I also have to tend to my “Where the Action is—Yesterday and Today … and Tomorrow” site on Facebook, which (get ready for the plug) is a nice paean to the old rock and roll variety series created by Dick Clark in the mid 1960s. Go to https://www.facebook.com/groups/598790963991601 to see what that is all about.
Try it, you’ll like it!
And I also have to do a ton of writing for my little side job, because as they say, my ship came in late yesterday afternoon, and I have to take care of that today.
What I mean is that the final set of fiscal 2021 sales figures finally came in from what is called the Army & Air Force Exchange Service (AAFES), which runs exchanges—military department stores—that are shopped by service men and their families, as well as military retirees and others. AAFES runs the exchanges that are on Army and Air Force installations.
This is a more than $14-billion-a-year industry—along with exchanges run by the other services and the commissaries, the military supermarkets, which are run throughout the services by the Defense Commissary Agency (DeCA)—but few know about it, as in the entire military scheme of things, it is but a grain of sand compared to the mega-billions spent on the military and the defense of this country each and every year.
It is probably one of the myriad of reasons that I was not hired during all those months after my company went under, because few had the interest in hiring a writer of 20-plus-years of experience covering a field they never heard of—and they were not inclined to find out and learn about this field.
Oh well, their loss (really my loss, but I like to tell myself otherwise).
I received the final total for AAFES late yesterday, and I have to work on the chart today, as well as on some peripheral stories on this information, so I will get on it a little later … but first, let me tell you what else I have to do today that has nothing to do with this, but has all to do with this idiotic “interim” insurance that I have.
Later this morning, I have to get my allergy shots, which I have done once a month each and every month since I was about 15 years old.
I have always gone to a local doctor or local site to get the shots, sometimes so close to where I am that I could walk to the site without breaking a sweat.
That was then, this is now …
When my wife retired, my son and I, and of course, my wife, lost her health insurance that we all received from her employer.
It wasn’t much of a problem for my wife, who dovetailed right into Medicare when she retired and went right into Social Security as someone who was 65 years of age (if you looked at her, you would swear that she was 20 years younger than that).
Anyway, this left my son and I in a lurch, mainly me, because my son could now dovetail himself into Medicare Disability, something he could have used before if he needed to but never had the need to use until now.
This presented its own set of problems, which took several months to fix, but his health insurance is now where it should be (I think).
But I was the problem.
Even though I was forced to retire before my wife, and am receiving Social Security, I do not qualify for Medicare yet because I am too young, not yet 65 (yes, I am younger than my wife is).
I have a five-month gap between her leaving her job, me losing the insurance from that job, and me being able to get Medicare in April, the month I turn 65.
So what is a poor boy like me to do?
Well, due to this wonderful program dubbed “Obamacare,” I am forced to get health insurance—some type of health insurance—to fill in the five-motnh crack until Medicare.
In New York State, you go onto the "New York State of Health" site, you pick one plan that sounds suitable, you get it approved, the state agrees to give you a stipend each month to help you pay for your insurance, and everything is hunky dory (I am simplifying all of this; if you are a regular reader here, you know that it isn’t as simple as all that).
So I have this insurance, which is really a Band-Aid until I get Medicare, and after going through a horror show in getting everything up to snuff with it, I swore that I would use it as sparingly as I could until I was able to get Medicare—and that is something that I have done.
However, when I have used it here and there for various things, it has pushed my health care expenses up greatly, with my various payments to various doctors often many times as much as I had been paying under my wife’s plan.
I know that individual plans are never as good as group plans, but when your salary is pretty much an iota of what it was when you were working full-time, it makes it that much harder to pay out all of this money.
There are many “perks” to this horrible plan that I have, and one of them is that I cannot go to my usual medical office to get my monthly allergy shots.
I found this out abruptly when all of this began last year, where the place I had been getting the shots for years literally turned me down flat, and told me where I had to go to get them.
The place I had been getting shots for years is about two or three miles away from where I live … the place that I have had to get the shots for the past few months is more than 20 miles away from my house!
To put it more bluntly, I live in eastern Nassau County, literally a hop, skip and a jump away from Suffolk County, but because of the insurance that I have, I have to get my shots in Western Nassau County, a hop, skip and a jump away from Eastern Queens in New York City.
Explain how that benefits me!
And the coup de grace on the entire matter is that I have been forced to pay four times as much for the shots as I have in the past.
No, you can’t win here, you just can’t.
Is it any wonder that I am counting the days—a lucky 13 more—until I can drop this insurance and move right into Medicare?
As I have said many, many times, if you are working, if you have not lost your job like I did, do not look a gift horse in the mouth.
You are darn lucky to have your job, because you have no clue what it is to be in a position like I am in, no clue at all.
So let me end this Rant right now, because I have so many things to do today, including using up my gas driving to get my shots, gas that cost me over $50 to fill up my tank yesterday.
The pain, the pain!
Have a great weekend, and speak to you again on Monday.
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