In January of 2012, my husband decided to sign up for Medicare Part B. He is eligible for it, and he turned in all the necessary paperwork on time. However, he still hasn’t received coverage. It seems that someone at Social Security lost his forms, and now, he is expected to make up for their incompetency.
Medicare is a public health insurance program that is offered to people who are age 65 or older. It is also for people who are disabled. My husband is in his thirties and is legally blind. This means the government considers him to be disabled. He has been receiving Medicare Part A for quite some time now.
Earlier this year, he and I both decided that it was time to get health insurance coverage. After a long struggle, I am now covered by a private, individual, health insurance plan. My husband signed up for Medicare Part B, which is the part that gives you coverage for things like visits to a doctor.
He filed out the required form and sent it to the Social Security office before the enrollment period deadline, (which was March 31, 2012). After that, he eventually was sent a letter that said he could not be approved for Medicare Part B because he didn’t sign up within the enrollment period. He called Social Security, since he knew, for a fact, that he did sign up within the proper timeframe.
The phone representative that talked with my husband said that, for some reason, his application wasn’t processed until the end of April. Basically, what happened was that Social Security “dropped the ball” and failed to process the form, even though my husband mailed it in within the deadline. The representative passed this along to someone else, and told my husband to wait for another phone call.
Today, that phone call arrived. A voice message was left by a woman who was calling from the local Social Security Office, (not the one that the Social Security website said to send the form to). She said “We need to see the form that you actually mailed out to our office”. Obviously, this is an impossible request. He cannot possibly have the form in his hand if he already mailed it out.
The woman also seemed confused about if my husband had insurance from his current employer, or if he once had insurance from somewhere else. She wants him to make a copy of the form that he no longer has and bring it to her office.
He applied for Medicare Part B in March of 2012. It is now almost July of 2012, and Social Security is still choosing to drag their feet about approving his application. He absolutely does qualify for it. The problem is entirely because someone at Social Security was incompetent, and lost the form that my husband mailed to them. Now, he has to go to the local Social Security Office and try to straighten things out.
I highly recommend that everyone who is trying to apply for Medicare (any part of Medicare), make a copy of all of the forms that you send out to them. That way, if they lose your forms, you will have a back up copy to bring with you when you try and fix their mistake.
Image by Neal Jennings on Flickr