Medicare, Shmedicare

I feel for the hundreds of thousands of senior citizens living in America who, after January 1, must begin the painful process of enrolling in Medicare Part D. Like anything with this practically worthless, fucked-up system, Medicare Part D has to be one of the hardest things to figure out, let alone apply for.

Why is someone like me, a 37 year-old, even remotely concerned? I'm enrolling my mom. And aside from tackling the holidays and dealing with the visiting relatives and spreading comfort and joy, I spend the majority of my time making phone calls to Medicare, Social Security and the Department of Health and Social Services to try and get what I thought were simple answers to some very basic questions. Today, I was on hold for about an hour and a half total, after calling the three agencies mentioned above--and each entity referred me to the other, so it was like being stuck in a goddamned traffic circle without a way to get out.

Oh they try to make things easy by automating their frickin' system so that instead of waiting for a live, clueless person, one gets lost in a phone tree, taking direction from a canned, clueless voice. And they try to make it personable by playing Baby Boomer appropriate hold music while you wait; but, honestly, wouldn't anyone have the right mind NOT to include "SHOUT!" as a hold song? Because, after all, isn't that what one wants to do when one is stuck on hold all afternoon?

It isn't just a matter of choosing or enrolling in one medicare-approved third party insurance company either; for me, it's about getting my mom enrolled after meeting low-income requirements and then finding out who decides to choose the insurance carrier: me or Social Security. Funny thing is, Social Security couldn't tell me!
I swear they make this complicated so that people will miss the deadline to enroll (which is actually May 15, 2006) so that they get penalized and will pay higher premiums.

I still haven't gotten anything accomplished and the deadline is fast approaching. I'll tell you though, once I'm finished with this mess, I'm going into business for counseling seniors because I don't know how anyone can get themselves enrolled.

Tomorrow's another day, eh?