Rant #2,877: Stop Stop Stop

Today is April 19, the 109th day of the year 2022.
 
You mean we aren’t even one-third into this year?
 
Yes, that is very true … we aren’t, but the year hasn’t changed much for me even though I am now fully on Social Security … insurance-wise, that is.
 
I am still getting questions from my doctors even though I am fully on Medicare, with my Medicare supplement insurance as an add-on.
 
Nobody seems to understand the insurance, and that includes doctors’ offices themselves.
 
Just during the past few days, I have been questioned by the office that gives me my allergy shots, my dentist and an outside entity related to my family’s general practitioner about the health insurance that we have, and quite frankly, at this point in the game, the questioning makes no sense.
 
The office that I get my allergy shots from questioned me whether I could even get my shots in that office again.
 
As I believe I told you a while back, my interim insurance forced me to go more than 20 miles away to get my shots, versus maybe three miles away that it was beforehand.
 
And they also charged me four times the amount for the shots than what I had been paying.
 
I was told by this office that once I was on Medicare, I could go back to the closer office to get the shots, but that office questioned whether they could give me the shots.
 
It had to be clarified to them by the home office—the one that was more than 20 miles away from me—that it was OK to get the shots at the closer office.
 
Don’t you think the closer office should have known this?
 
Then yesterday, I went to the dentist for a cleaning, and I gave them my new insurance card for dental insurance that I am paying for separately.
 
I took this insurance for not only myself but for my son, because it pretty much duplicated what I had previously when our dental insurance came from my wife’s job that she retired from in November.
 
Anyway, I presented the card to them, and my son’s card, so they could add it into their system.
 
I had my cleaning, my teeth were judged to be just fine, and I was prepared to leave the office, but I was told that there was a problem with my dental insurance—they could not find me listed or having an account with this company.
 
I went home, and after many minutes on the phone, it was clarified for certain that I have an account with them—I mean, I have been paying them for the past few months for this insurance—so why can’t my dentist find a record of me having this insurance?
 
I have no idea, but further complicating the entire matter was that I had been double-paying for my own insurance with them, and not paying my son’s insurance, through no fault of my own.
 
Evidently, I was paying both paper billing and electronic billing thinking that I was paying for both my son and myself, but even though the electronic billing said I was paying for my son—even using his name in the emails to me—the payment was going to my own account, leaving my son two months in arrears.
 
I cleared that all up—I hope—but why were the emails addressed to him if they were for me?
 
Maybe the insurance gods can answer that question, but I can’t.
 
And then we have the third recent debacle, which has yet to be cleared up, where our GP office is questioning where the payment is coming from for my son’s most recent visit there, in November 2021.
 
They are saying that his insurance—Medicare, Part A and B—is either responsible for the payment or not responsible for the payment, and that either we are responsible or we are not responsible.
 
Yes, this makes no sense, and a letter was sent to me—addressed to me, not to my son because I handle all his affairs—related to this conundrum.
 
However, even if the letter was addressed to me, my GP’s billing office is having problems talking to me directly about it.
 
My son is developmentally disabled, and that is why I handle all of his business myself. He cannot possibly understand all of this—heck, no sane person could—but the office believes that since he is an adult age, they should talk to him directly.
 
New York State recognizes me as my son’s official representative, but that is not good enough for this office, evidently.
 
I have told them that in certain cases, if my son signs off on me as his representative on the phone then that is OK with other offices, but they are having major consternation over doing this in this instance.
 
I spoke to them four or five times yesterday, emailed them the cover letter of the communication I received, which is clearly addressed to me, and they keep on putting me off.
 
They were supposed to call me back before the close of business yesterday, and of course, they did not. They told me that if they could not clear this up by the close of business yesterday, that they would call me at 9 a.m. today, which, of course, I won’t be holding my breath on at all.
 
You just know that I am going to have to call them, and hopefully this thing will get wrapped up pronto, because quite frankly, this makes no sense at all.
 
So there you have it.
 
Medicare has not been the panacea that I thought it was, in particular since my interim insurance that I had was so bad—so bad, in fact, that I was told by medical professionals that it was “the worst insurance you can get.”

Thank you, New York State of Health, for that wonderful insurance. 
 
I figured that Medicare and my supplement would be some major steps above what I had, but all I am getting is agita from it.
 
Would Medicate and my supplements cover agita treatment?
 
At this point, I simply don’t know … and what’s worse, I am afraid to ask.