Tuesday, March 09, 2010

So far today

I've spun around in circles...
  • Called CMS to ask them whether the enrollment for medicaid for the 3 kids should be done with their "plan" and how that works.
  • Talked to the 'nurse' who began explaining then decided he didn't understand it himself when I asked a question
  • Talked to a financial assistant person who told me that most likely medicaid won't actually help us any because it won't pay a coinsurance or copayment that our private insurance leaves us with. Next year it would help cover our deductible (but we've almost met that already).
  • Also learned in the last few days that our primary physician and the ENT that we see won't even bill medicaid as a secondary, so those costs would come to us anyway (even for the deductible).
  • Financial person said she didn't know the answers to (most of) my questions either and took my name and # to call me back... sometime.
  • Called Medicaid as the CMS financial person told me to do and they said it is not marked that we have a private insurance. She says we have to call social security to get them to mark or not mark that we have a private insurance...
  • Medicaid representative went through all 3 children's files and marked them that I'd called and I'm calling SS.
  • Called SS who said that she had nothing to do with our insurance and she doesn't have a way to access that system or anything else. They only know that we're eligible because of her. That's all!
  • Attempted to call back medicaid but got a busy signal on 3 different occasions.
Nothing like jumping through a few hoops AND not getting any answers...

2 comments:

  1. Seems like your system is set up to discourage people from using it. Here we call long term care and set up an appointment and have help all the way through the process, though getting approved is difficult until age 3 or so

    I hope you have better luck the next time you pick up the phone. How frustrating.

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  2. I agree it does sound like the system is set up to discourage. Is there anyway that you can show up at the local office? This is usually helpful, it's easier to be discouraging over the phone than it is in person. Especially if your feet are made of cement until you get answers.

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