I had Friday off here in the middle of November. I was under the impression, based on information which I had been given over the phone, that I could sign up with my state's health care website before the next open enrolment period. Which began the following Monday. This was the beginning of a three and a half telephone adventure. Last March, as a result of applying to my state's health care website, I was instructed to apply for Medicaid to find out if i qualified for a tax credit toward the purchase of healthcare insurance. The reply from Medicaid was to send me my very first Medicaid card. So this meant that I was enrolled in Medicaid, right? See, I don't know anything about Medicaid. Some time during the summer, they sent me a letter which told me that my Medicaid may be discontinued after July 31st if I didn't supply them with some information missing from my application. This was the last response I got from them for a few months.
Armed with Medicaid, I went shopping for a doctor. I signed up on one health care provider's website and scrolled their list of both Family Medicine and Internal Medicine doctors. I picked one and called to see if she would accept me as a new patient. I was told that she was on maternity leave. I waited until October to check back with them, and was told that, out of this list of fifteen or twenty doctors, only four were accepting new patients, and she was not one of them. And by the way, their information told them that I no longer had Medicaid. I called Medicaid and they told me that it had been suspended until I checked a box on a letter they sent me and returned it to them with my own postage. Doing so would have verified information reported to them by the state. I needed to re apply, I was told. I did. I got a letter in the mail which informed me that I was not eligible for Medicaid. I make too much money.
However, being denied Medicaid does qualify me for a tax credit. Looks like I jumped the gun on the doctor search. So long Doctor Walcher. We won't be meeting and discussing your work in a South American orphanage or your scrap booking. So, like I said, I thought I could reapply for Medicaid and get signed up with my state's health care website, all before the start of the next open enrolment. This is the story of how I eventually found this out. I first called the state site's number, an employee of which told me that I needed an "authorization number" from Medicare. Great. I called Medicaid. They told me that they did not have my authorization number, but that the state site should be able to access it. I had crossed the event horizon and was headed toward the black hole. Then Medicaid told me that my case number was my authorization number. Then they gave me a different number. I called the state site back. Their system was not going to accept the case number as the authorization number. I called Medicaid back. I wanted to talk to a supervisor. All supervisors were in a meeting. I was transferred to a voice mail. I called Medicaid back. I wanted to speak to a supervisor. 'Why did I want to speak to a supervisor?' I laid out what I had been told. "I'm not responsible for what anyone else has told you," I was told. "No," I explained, "that's what a supervisor is for, but you tell me that they are all in a meeting." I was transferred to a message which incorrectly told me that I had been on hold for more than an hour and that I "should try to call back at a time which was more convenient. Goodbye."
My final call to Medicaid, my final execution of the process of keying in my zip code, and then my social security number, I was transferred out of the Medicaid "Customer Service" department. I had come out the other side of the black hole into some other building. I was now speaking to someone who told me everything which no one else had. If I get denied Medicaid before open enrolment begins, the state won't recognize the denial for the new period, so I must wait until Monday to reapply for Medicaid. I wouldn't have been issued an authorization number before this week, because the number is a part of a new system which Medicaid is switching over to. Beginning this week. Even her system didn't show that I had originally applied for Medicaid last March. She didn't believe me until I told her that they sent me a card and gave her the number on the card. She gave me the number for her office to call on Monday.
The next day, I went to work as I do every Saturday. I was told that the owner sold the company. But that's a much longer story...
Monday, it turned out, I had off. I called the lady's direct office line which she gave me. All I got was a message about prenatal Medicare. No one picked up the phone. Just before that, I called the regular Medicaid Customer Service number. They told me that, according to rules which they were unable to explain (which includes anything), I could not reapply for Medicaid over the phone. They told me that they would send me a written form to fill out. By Friday, this form had not shown up in my mailbox. As I did not have to be at work until 1 PM this day, I thought that I would drop by the Robert T. Castro Family Services Center, or the Robert C. Castro Family Emergency Center, or whatever it's called. It's just up the street, and I thought that I would drop by in the morning to fill out what i was told over the phone was a required reapplication to Medicaid, to get denied, by which I would be given an authorization number, which is, I was told over the phone, absolutely necessary to get health care through the state website. I went to a desk and was given an application (which I also noticed were available from boxes on the wall) and told to wait to be called to a window, which I was in jig time. At the window, I was told to wait in a waiting area for an interview. Someone came out in a few minutes to tell me that I was ready to meet with someone from the state health care website. When I mentioned the words authorization number, she looked as if she hadn't heard those words before, and again that having been denied once already for Medicaid I was ready now, number or no number or anything else, to meet with someone from the state site to walk out of there today signed up for health care. She did not appear to know anything at all about any Medicaid office anywhere else except for the place where we were standing. As someone without an appointment, I would have to wait an unknown period of time to speak with someone from the state site, and she revealed that I was in fact able to make an appointment, and she told me that someone would call me with their phone number to call them back to set up an appointment to meet back here. I did in fact have a message on my voice mail after I got home from work. Rather than offering to set up an appointment, the message was from someone who was informed by "someone from our call center that you had questions about Medicaid." She did leave a number.
I had heard on the radio that the deadline for open enrolment was the 7th of this month. Then I heard on the radio that it was the 15th of this month. I went back to the Robert T. Castro Family Emergency Fun Center after work. The guy at the desk directed me to the window, with someone who I told I am ready to speak with a representative from the state healthcare website. This person insisted that I needed to apply for Medicaid once again, as I came in here to do before and was stopped and told that I was ready to speak with a representative from the state healthcare website. On my own, I wandered over to a window, which I discovered had the same of the state healthcare website in its window. A guy behind the window gave me a card for the person who left me the phone message. The next day, my dishwasher overflowed. The day after, when I got home from work, I went to the Medicaid website to reapply. After attempting to login with a password and eventually being locked out of the system, I was able to complete an application by entering the site as a "guest" applicant. Even though the online application gave me no option to put down that I live with someone receiving Social Security. And the system wanted me to leave the online application process to go to my email, to get a verification code, with which to return to the application to verify my email address. Which I did not figure out how to do. The day before, while I was at work, I had called the person from the Robert T. Castration Dept. who had left me a message. She told me that I did indeed need to reapply for Medicaid in order, once rejected, to get my authorization number with which I shall be ready to purchase health insurance through the state, but then armed with a discount.
At the end of the week, I was downtown at my bank. I stopped into a burger place, and when I came out, the storefront next door it turns out is a walk-in center for the state healthcare website. I did indeed walk in, and was told that as long as I begin the Medicaid reapplication process before the deadline, which is in fact the 15th of this month, that I qualify for having applied before the deadline. Whenever I do hear from Medicaid, they will be there until February, and they will be open Sunday through Saturday, all week. I will not have to return to the Robert T. Castro Flagellant Family Center.
So I get my notice from Medicaid in the mail. Great! I open the letter. It's addressed to me. There at the top is my authorization number. Great! The letter, addressed to me, informs me that...the person I live with is qualified for a tax credit to purchase health insurance. WTF? So...I have to wait until next Sunday, the day before the deadline to apply before the end of pen enrolment, to apply to Medicaid once again. Remember the company I work for being sold to new owners? Without going into that story, the week between the two Sundays is the first in my professional career in which I work 74 hours. In a single week. Sunday the 14th is the first day I have time to do something other than go to bed. I wake up Sunday, some time after 3 AM. I put in a load of laundry, and I reapply online. Shortly thereafter, I get a letter addressed with my last name as my last name, and my first name as my last name. This one tells me that I am qualified for Medicaid. The day after Christmas, I am once again on my way to the Robert T. Castro building to inquire about what to do next.
...and it is with this visit that I discover the machine behind the face. 'Twas Arthur who asked Zed what he discovered in the library. "Twas a book titled the Wizard of Oz...Zardoz. "It was a book about a man with a loud voice who told lies!" I took a number, the lady at the window gave me another number, and some minutes later my number was called by another lady who took me past the door with the key card lock and through a big room full of mostly empty cubicles. She sat me down and told me first that my application in March of this year had the wrong birth date. That was the "case" for which Medicaid was approved, and then denied in October. This explains why the lady...on the phone...in the secret Medicaid bunker, could not find "my" case in her computer. When I reapplied at the end of this year, this generated an entirely new "case" for "me." That is, the me which still had the wrong birth date, and now the wrong name. When I re-reapplied on the day before the deadline for Medicaid applications, the Medicaid computer system gave we a different incorrect name. This is what I was told by the lady back in the large room of mostly empty cubicles on the day after Christmas. But the best was yet to come. According to her, the Medicaid computer system has been granting Medicaid to applicants who make too much to qualify for it, and it has been denying Medicaid to applicants who do qualify for it. ...and she says that this problem will not be fixed until the software engineers do their thing. "Zardoz!"
She did not know if the computer would allow her to put my correct information into the system, and thereby generate a denial which would allow me to purchase healthcare with a tax credit. She tried, the computer flipped a coin, and I now have my denial letter with its no longer useless authorization number. She offered to alert a representative from the state healthcare website that I was now ready to meet to purchase healthcare. She told me that she was putting a "task" into the computer, thereby alerting said representative.
This particular adventure came to an end during the second week of January, 2015. I think that it was a Thursday. I snuck out of another newly fashionable 12-hour week at work to make it to a downtown storefront which is between businesses for the moment. I entered at last, not the Robert T. Castro Family Feud Center, but a location for the state healthcare website. I told the young man in a suit and tie, with moussed hair, that I had my authorization number. After a brief couple of forms to fill out, I was directed to a table which was eventually approached by a woman with a laptop. A health insurance broker. We spoke of kings and butterfly wings before she suggested a couple of plans and told me to think it over, before shooing me back out onto the street. I called her a couple of days later, and with a swipe of my credit card number, I have my very first health insurance. I have to call her back to find out where I send my premium payment by mail.
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