Venting!!!

[gja1000]

OMG! I have spent several hours today trying to negotiate the health care delivery system.

First I needed to change two insurance addresses for my mom. I didn't realize my mom's insurance things were still being forwarded to us by the post office until our year of forwarding service was up December 20th. Then mom's mail started going to our rent house and our renters kept the mail but didn't give it to us till Jan. 3. Mom had a lot of mail from her two supplemental insurance policies after her hospitalization in October. Of course they wouldn't let me change the address over the phone without talking to her to verify that it was OK for me to do that (I tried to do that last week to no avail). So today, I went to her apartment and called them. I was on hold for about 20 minutes with the first insurance company and then over 30 minutes with the second one and THEN it was the wrong department and I had to start over. Fortunately, the second call took only about 5 minutes. I just can't understand why customer service is SOOOOO BAD!!!

Then, Gary's mail-in prescription service changed from Medco to Caremark after Jan. 1. Gary takes 15 RX meds, plus he gets his insulin from them. I got a letter in Dec. telling us it would change after Jan. 1, but here it is Jan. 10th and not another word about how to get meds from the new provider, Caremark. Tonight I got on Caremark's website and tried to register, but couldn't because I didnt have a Caremark RX card. So I called Caremark - another 20 minutes on hold - only to go round and round and round and finally found the information I needed to register on the website so I could see Gary's prescriptions for re-order (thankfully, the scripts from Medco were transferred to Caremark). BUT THEN, I could not register, it wouldn't let me, even though I had the information I supposedly needed. SOOOOO, another call to customer service - maybe on hold only 10 minutes this time - and I found out the reason I couldn't register is that he was already registered. HUH? How could that be. Well, his insurance used Caremark SEVEN YEARS AGO, and he was still registered in their computer system. Can you believe that!!! I would think when you were no longer eligible for benefits, you would be kicked out of the system, but nooooooo. So, the kindly gentleman gave me our old username, a new password and FINALLY, about an hour after I started the process, I WAS IN!!! YAY!!! But, Gary's insulin was not on his list of drugs. Fortunately, we have an appointment with the diabetes doctor on Friday, so we can get a new prescription which we will have to mail in and that will take a good two weeks for it to come. I know we can get a bottle from the doc if we need it - but I don't want to have to call, go to the office, etc etc. if the insulin does not come in time. Makes me sooooo mad!!!

My rant is - HOW DO OLDER PEOPLE WHO DON'T SEE OR HEAR WELL NEGOTIATE THIS CONVOLUTED SYSTEM? Everything seems so complex now and it takes ME so long to figure everything out and get someone to talk to or get things right - I just don't know how our elders ever manage to get the health care, medications, or whatever that they need.