Another day in Paradise and I’m in a brain freeze. There is no subject on the face of this earth that I want to write about, so I’m writing about not wanting to write. It might be because my opportunity clock alarmed me too early this morning, and I wasn’t quite prepared for taking on an opportunity. The sky was very dark grey and ominous. By the time I finished breakfast it was snowing huge flakes the size of my fist and falling fast. Although the sky was dark the space between the sky and mother earth was a very bright white.
This was a day that was supposed to be easy. One task I had to accomplish was a phone call to the State of Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services. My Lovely was awarded a Medicaid insurance card under a little known law that Governor J. B.” Pritzker signed into law back in February. Under this law folks without Social Security numbers can apply for Medicaid services. Basically, it came as a letter stating that she qualifies and it contains her name, an RIN (Recipient Identification Number) and her date of birth. The date of birth was shown wrong. Somehow the month and the day were transposed from reality. The month should have been a two, and the day a three, but they had it as the month is three, and the day is a two. All this told me was that anytime she will use this card, the bill will be sent to the State and they will bong the request for payment because her birthday will be different. I needed to get that straightened out.
In the fine print of the letter was a statement “you may be required to enroll in a health plan”, naturally, I wanted to know if she needed to do that. If you want to know if you need a health plan please call the “Health Plan Benefits Hotline.” I dialed and immediately got a voice stating that the call volumes were high and that there were at least 20 people ahead of me and that the time to wait would be twenty minutes, so much for a “Hotline.” I chose to wait . At least they played some decent music to keep me holding, with an occasional break telling me to keep holding because my call was important to them. I paid some bills, and cleared my desk while holding. At the twenty-three minute mark a real live human named Kion (Kee-on) came on. Kion immediately asked for my social, and I had to remind him that the call was about my Lovely and not me, and she didn’t have a social, would her RIN do? A confusing thing about this letter was that I was also approved and awarded an RIN. I made a fatal mistake of asking him why I was included in the award. The next ten minutes was an interrogation about me and my circumstances and nothing about my Lovely. I had to remind him that this was about her and not me. It didn’t matter, he was busy typing away explaining to his computer why I should be removed from Medicaid.
Eventually, the conversation got back to Lovely. I still didn’t have an answer as to whether or not she needed to be enrolled into a medical plan. Kion did not know. He gave me another number for Client Enrollment Services where no doubt I will have another twenty minute wait to get a hotline connection.
Grrrr! The snow was three inches deep by the time I ended the call, and it was time to take Lovely to her doctor’s appointment.
Filed under: Biography, family, Government | Tagged: Health Insurance, Healthcare and Family Services. | Leave a comment »
In days long past on Saturday Night Live, Gilda Radner played the part of a ranting TV news reporter. Her co-anchors watched her in puzzlement. At the end of her piece, the anchors would tell her the facts were all wrong. She would look at them sheepishly, and say “never mind.”
