It only took the freak’n government – well, Medicare – three, count ém… 1… 2… 3… years to find the ‘i’ that they lost. Perhaps if it had been a capital ‘I’ they could have done it in two years.
For reasons completely unknown to either one of us, Señora’s last name became misspelled in the Medicare system when she became Medicare eligible. Somehow it went from Weinhaus to Wenhaus. It was correct in the Social Security’s system, but wrong in Medicare.
No biggie, right? Wrong. This has caused claims from doctors, hospitals, laboratories, etc. to be continually rejected. I cannot begin to tell the amount time Señora has spent on the phone and/or filling out forms trying to get these claims paid. Especially frustrating as it should all be happening in the background without input from her.
Should be easy to fix, right? Wrong. One would think you could just go to the website and make the correction, wait a bit, and the problem would be resolved. After all people’s last name change all the time. The option was not available. So to the phones she went. She was told multiple times that they would take care of the problem, just wait a bit and her new card would be in the mail. Then one agent told her it needed to be done through Social Security. The game of ping pong was on. After this had been going on for a while I found the information to contact the Office of Ombudsman who is supposed to resolve such problems. All they did was direct her back to Medicare.
I wish she had kept a record of the number of calls she has made to the Medicare office and the Social Security office. The number of hours spent trying to correct the problem probably has approached one or two work weeks, if you include the time spent on hold trying to get hold of an actual person.
Probably the most frustrating part was the agents who said they would resolve the problem, then never followed through. Señora was ready to give up on trying to fix it, but I urged her to do a Blues Brothers and make the correcting her last name in the Medicare system a mission from God. Then, poof, new motivation…she was having to spend hours resolving an unpaid medical bill.. again. !Ay Caramba!
Finally, today, after three very long years of trying her revised Medicare card arrived with her last name spelled correctly. Now all she has to is go back and correct some insurance cards on which she deliberately misspelled her last name (suggestion from the insurance company) trying to make processing claims easier.
People worry about a Big Brother government. I don’t. There are way too cases like Señora‘s. Whether it was apathy or incompetence or both is hard tell. There is a reason that the terms SNAFU and FUBAR came out of the archetypal government organization, the military.
Really that is a little unfair. In my life I have worked for two different state governments and a couple quasi-governmental organizations. There are a lot hard working people in these organizations trying their best to do a good job. Frequently, especially with state jobs, they are underpaid and underappreciated. But there are definitely a certain percentage of employees skating by.
But she has her new card, hip hip hooray.
And so it should have not gone.
Doing my happy dance for this final resolution to this ridiculous FUBAR.