Anathema
Crotchety Olde Man
I can easily explain why Government healthcare is failing..... It's because if a total, systemic and systematic failure in even the most basic of processes - Changing the name of a member who has gotten married.
My wife has been collecting SSDI for the past 8 years due to diagnosis of PTSD and severe depression/anxiety. With that she has also been eligible for Medicare and Medicaid over that period of time. When we got married last July (2014) she also became eligible to get my employee health coverage as well. We wanted to make sure we had everything in order so we waited until 1/1/2015 to add her to my health plan. At that point our intent was to have her use my employer's health insurance as her Primary insurance, Medicare as her Secondary and to have Medicaid only for emergency situations where neither other plan would cover her.
To that end, we went to the Social Security office last August to change her name, and to find out how we went about getting it changed with the Government medical plans. We were told that changing it with SS would simply cascade it down to the other groups and that we didn't need to do anything else....... WRONG.
We come to January of 2015 and her doctors are saying they can't charge Medicare or Medicaid because the name is wrong. We went back to the SS Office, only to find out they hadn't bothered (in the last 5 months) to push the name change through to Medicare or Medicaid. The very polite lady at the window proceeds to spend 10 minuts clacking away on her keyboard and then ensures us "It's all set folks."...... WRONG.
While that DID correct the Medicare name issue, it created another problem. Namely that neither Medicaie nor my insurer knew about each other's coverage, which then became an issue when BOTH groups tried to say the other was responsible for an ER visit my wife had back in April. Two more weeks, a half dozen phone calls, and both plans were supposedly happy with everything.
THEN, comes May and my wife is in the hospital after throwing out her back. She can't get into the rehab center we prefer because both my insurance and Medicare consider it too expensive for the rehab she needs...... and Medicaid still thinks she's got her maiden name, so they're refusing to even consider helping out.
Yep. Almost a year later, and TWO separate trips to the SS office to get this corrected and Medicaid STILL doesn't have her proper name. For the next three wweks my wife is on the phone daily between SS and Medicaid trying to get her name changed. Two more trips to the SS Office and it's still not cleared up.
Finally, two weeks ago someone from SS tells us we have to go to the Welfare office to get the name changed. Despirte the fact that she doesn't collect any Welfare benefits and that we've faxed copies of her SS Card, Marriage Certificate, State ID Card and Birth Certificate to Medicaid on at least three occasions in the last month.
She went down to Welfare with her father this morning (I'm at work) and after 3 hours of waiting was told that the name change had to be processed through SS because she doesn't collect any Welfare benefits. Back to the damn drawing board AGAIN.
If these departments can't even process a simple name change request (with all the necessary documentation), how the hell does anyone expect them to process complex medical claims?????
My wife has been collecting SSDI for the past 8 years due to diagnosis of PTSD and severe depression/anxiety. With that she has also been eligible for Medicare and Medicaid over that period of time. When we got married last July (2014) she also became eligible to get my employee health coverage as well. We wanted to make sure we had everything in order so we waited until 1/1/2015 to add her to my health plan. At that point our intent was to have her use my employer's health insurance as her Primary insurance, Medicare as her Secondary and to have Medicaid only for emergency situations where neither other plan would cover her.
To that end, we went to the Social Security office last August to change her name, and to find out how we went about getting it changed with the Government medical plans. We were told that changing it with SS would simply cascade it down to the other groups and that we didn't need to do anything else....... WRONG.
We come to January of 2015 and her doctors are saying they can't charge Medicare or Medicaid because the name is wrong. We went back to the SS Office, only to find out they hadn't bothered (in the last 5 months) to push the name change through to Medicare or Medicaid. The very polite lady at the window proceeds to spend 10 minuts clacking away on her keyboard and then ensures us "It's all set folks."...... WRONG.
While that DID correct the Medicare name issue, it created another problem. Namely that neither Medicaie nor my insurer knew about each other's coverage, which then became an issue when BOTH groups tried to say the other was responsible for an ER visit my wife had back in April. Two more weeks, a half dozen phone calls, and both plans were supposedly happy with everything.
THEN, comes May and my wife is in the hospital after throwing out her back. She can't get into the rehab center we prefer because both my insurance and Medicare consider it too expensive for the rehab she needs...... and Medicaid still thinks she's got her maiden name, so they're refusing to even consider helping out.
Yep. Almost a year later, and TWO separate trips to the SS office to get this corrected and Medicaid STILL doesn't have her proper name. For the next three wweks my wife is on the phone daily between SS and Medicaid trying to get her name changed. Two more trips to the SS Office and it's still not cleared up.
Finally, two weeks ago someone from SS tells us we have to go to the Welfare office to get the name changed. Despirte the fact that she doesn't collect any Welfare benefits and that we've faxed copies of her SS Card, Marriage Certificate, State ID Card and Birth Certificate to Medicaid on at least three occasions in the last month.
She went down to Welfare with her father this morning (I'm at work) and after 3 hours of waiting was told that the name change had to be processed through SS because she doesn't collect any Welfare benefits. Back to the damn drawing board AGAIN.
If these departments can't even process a simple name change request (with all the necessary documentation), how the hell does anyone expect them to process complex medical claims?????
