Blessings to Count
Thu., January 26, 05:38 PM
Faith? Superstition? Whatever it is, I am certain that – once again – someone is looking out for me. It’s not just a matter of knowing that things could always be worse. I seem to have dodged the bullet one more time.
When I wrote Death by Confusion about the new Medicare-D prescription plans, I pointed out that Husband and I didn’t quality for extra assistance; but that’s all right because we will still pay less than the $700-plus we were paying for prescriptions each month.
I also wrote that people with lower incomes, who did qualify for extra aid, should inquire from Medicare itself. People who had private insurance should work with their carriers. Evidently I was wrong on both counts. The news is full of stories about people who signed up for Medicare-D and lost all of their state aid. And then there is this story.
When the lady called her carrier, they didn’t know how to advise her. So she signed up for Medicare-D and her private insurance was canceled. Because of the cancellation, she lost her other medical insurance as well. I am appalled – but somehow not surprised. I ran into similar problems when I had to correct the error on Husband’s account.
This is the result of not training the telephone answerers properly. They are taught one thing only – how enroll people. Should you have some other question, they don’t know what to do. There evidently isn’t a supervisor they can ask. When I pushed her, the girl I talked to finally transferred me. She did not know how to transfer a call, but did finally put me into a queue, where I waited another twenty minutes.
These insurance companies don’t know sh1t about running a business. It’s all very well to dumb down your processes so that you can hire temps at $9 per hour; you can certainly boost your capacity to increase your client base. But how long can you serve those clients if you don’t train your employees better? And how long, in this litigious society, do you think you can avoid fines and humongous lawsuits?
Boy, oh boy, am I glad I’m not trying to run a business any more!
On a happier note, our son actually “persuaded” Husband to get up and dressed, to go out with us for breakfast. (“You be ready by nine a.m. or else we’ll go without you…”) Of course, the big temptation was his promise to bring Miss P., Son’s fiancée, so that we could all talk about wedding plans.
Naturally, Husband also ordered much more than he could eat in one sitting, so that he could take some home and stretch it over three days… But that’s Husband. He was positively perky for the rest of the day.
I count my blessings.
