Medicare Owes Me $661. 84. Let Me Show You Why It Does
The website Medicare.gov. suggests enrolling in Medicare online is easy (“It takes less than 10 minutes,” the site claims). But my recent experience attempting to sign up for Medicare demonstrates otherwise. Delays in action and confusing correspondence – just flat-out mistakes amounting to all-around incompetence – wound up costing me $661.84.
So Medicare owes me $661.84. Here’s why.
I went online to register for Medicare, including Part B, last November 6, shortly after leaving my last job. The website assured me I would receive a letter in the mail confirming my enrollment within 30 days. None ever arrived.
I called the Social Security Administration on December 4 to ask the status of the letter. I was told I had to go to the local SSA office to verify my identity in person in order to be eligible to receive a Medicare card. I visited the office next day December 5 and was promised my Medicare card would arrive within two weeks. By December 27 – 23 days later – no Medicare card had arrived yet.
As I waited, and as I prepared to leave the U.S. on December 14 to visit family overseas, I needed to make sure I had medical insurance coverage for January, 2020. So I extended my COBRA coverage for one more month, at a cost of $661.84.
A series of letters from Medicare followed in short order. The first, dated December 28, said my monthly premium for Part B would be $144.60. The second, dated January 24, said it would actually be $289.20 because my income exceeded a certain level. The third, dated January 26, reverted to $144.60. One of those letters also said I would be billed for a three-month period.
On January 27, I received a bill. The bill amounted to $1,446. It would cover Part B for the five months from January through May. Even though the second page cited monthly payments of $144.60, the bill was was calculated on the basis of five premiums for $289 per month.
The only clarity here was my confusion. So I called the Social Security Administration with questions. First, was my monthly premium $144 or $289, exactly twice as much? And if I was supposed to be billed for a three-month period, why was I being billed for a five-month period?
The answers I received are as follows: It’s $289 because of my income category and the bill spans five months because Medicare premium bills go out only quarterly and mine happened to arrive – owing to the previous delays, mind you – in between quarters.
None of which eased my frustration in the least. Why, then, was the correspondence from the U.S. government so contradictory? Why was I forced to verify my identity in person when my identity is easily verified online through a basic Google search and through my employers over the last three decades?
Why, further, did a letter from Medicare confirming my enrollment fail to arrive when I was told it would? And why did the same fate befall my all-important Medicare card?
With such mistakes accruing and compounding each other, the upshot was that I paid COBRA $661.84 for January unnecessarily and without any opportunity to know I would eventually also owe Medicare $289 for the same month.
I then explained, as politely as I know how, my biggest grievance to the Medicare representative listening patiently on the line with me. I can parse Medicare’s correspondence with enough forensic precision to recognize the abundant disparities. I readily grasped the pattern of rank ineptitude at play. I also had recourse to complain in public as I’m doing here.
But what about the 44 million other Medicare beneficiaries, 15% of our population? How many must suffer the same insults to the system?
“The letters are very confusing,” the representative acknowledged. “Everyone else calls in with questions about the letters, too. I apologize.”
My check nevertheless went right into the mail.
This much I know for sure: the bureaucratic practices I describe here are sloppy at best and at worst profoundly infuriating. Medicare should get its act together, starting with clearer communications, if not for me then for its 44 million beneficiaries, especially now, during the coronavirus pandemic. Is that too much to ask of a federal agency whose existence is made possible by taxpayers in the first place?
It's almost enough to make me vote Republican.
But probably not quite.
