It's been said that if you have your health you have everything. And in that respect I truly am a blessed man.
I don't mean to tempt the fates, but I am exceptionally healthy. I've never been seriously ill. Never had a doctor say something like, "Uh-oh." Never even spent a night in a hospital bed.
I did spend two miserable nights at St. John's Hospital in Santa Monica. But that was for the births of my two equally-healthy daughters. That was not fun. As I had to sleep on a recliner chair while Deb was in labor. She got an epidural. I had a gummy edible and some leftover soup crackers.
On top of all that I may be the last man in America to have NOT gotten Covid. My health is so exceptional I was able to remain 44 years of age for a good 20 years.
But now I am 64.
And facing the greatest health challenge of my life: signing up for Medicare. My phone has become Spam Central, ringing off the hook (sorry for the old man reference) with pitches from Medicare Consultants.
Why on earth does healthcare coverage necessitate outside paid consultants?
They not only reach me by phone, they clog my mailbox with letters, flyers, and pitches that make me yearn for the pleasant dulcet tones of local political ads.
The deadline for me to make my life-altering Medicare choices is drawing near. And though many kindhearted readers of this blog have showered me with compliments for being whip smart and impressively knowledgable -- OK, maybe I've gilded the lily -- the truth is when it comes to this shit my brain is like a garbage breakfast scramble, "tuna fish, pineapple and Ready Whip, sure why not?"
I suspect Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert or Kari Lake could make more sense of Medicare than I could.
The other truth is, I was always more than willing to let Deb handle this part of our lives. I miss her patience, intellect and attention to detail. Hard to believe that at one point in the past 65 years, I could solve differential equations and calculate the volume of a 3D rhomboid bisected by a 2D parallelogram.
But HSA, family deductibles, out of pocket costs, PPOs and HMOs, are as foreign to me as rational logic is to the MyPillowGuy™.
Why does it have to be like that?
I suppose for the same reason why we still measure in inches and miles, while the entirety of the industrial world is on the standardized and simpler metric system.
'Murica, fuck yeah!
On that note, I will retell the story of how I was stricken with a sudden bout of bronchitis while traveling in London about a decade ago. I know earlier I said I was exceptionally healthy, but 11 hours on a British Airways flight, seated next to a man wearing cheap cologne, and who had just smoked a carton of Apple Reds, left me severely depleted of oxygen.
We bolted over the St. Vincent's Hospital and a team of three doctors including a fancy schmancy pulmonologist rushed to my attention. I was given a temporary bed, hooked up to an oxygen machine and left the hospital 4 hours later. All for the cost of $50. The rest was covered by the good liberty-loving folks of the Kingdom, who had the good sense to institute the single payer NHS (National Health Service) in 1948.
Last time I looked, the United States, Syria and Somalia were the only countries on the planet without universal access to medical attention. Good company, huh?
If affordable, efficient universal healthcare is what qualifies as Communism in the pea brains of our homegrown Red Hats, then put me down for a few heaping helpings of that sweet, sweet Bolshevism.
Geez, Rich, you could not be more spot on. Like you, I'm nearing the deadline to sign up. Like you, I still spend time with the iron and Peloton is my crack cocaine and think of myself as really healthy, although I did spend a bit of time in hospital over the summer (you lucky duck!). I'm also an overeducated guy who in my past ran big agencies with complex P&Ls and can do the Sunday crossword in ink. But every time I sit in front of the screen to sign up, my eyes glass over, my mind fogs and my patience wanes. If they tried hard, really hard, they could make it more complicated and confusing, but I'm not sure how. Your title for this post is spot on!
ReplyDeleteHey Rich. Try fairsquremedicare.com
ReplyDeleteAsk for Daniel Petkevich, a Yale grad who got into this business after seeing the rigamarole his parents had to go through to figure out their coverage.
I signed up several years ago with him, and my wife qualified this November. He made it simple to pick the right plan and de-mystify the arcane language and info.
Good hunting.
Chip
This is all soooo true.
ReplyDeleteI have a word of advice for those of us who are still working and have other insurance options: DON'T DO IT. Medicare is the worst insurance I have ever had. What they don't tell you is that if you are still earning, your cost for Medicare advantage is not cheap. I pay $580 per month for my Medicare insurance. AND I have a Tier 5 prescription that costs $2100 per month until you hit like $8k and then drops to $124. If you are on regular insurance, the drug company picks up the co-pay -- BUT NOT IF YOU ARE ON MEDICARE!!! WTF? And then if you have to have procedures like an MRI, it's $200 deductible per day plus another $116 that doesn't get covered.
I feel like Medicare is a rip-off that only helps insurance companies. I get calls and mailings from CIGNA offering a $50 gift card if I get an annual checkup. To me that means they must get at least $50 more from the govt than they pay the doctor. We really need universal health care that will eliminate that whole industry and cost.