Tag Archives: Humor

I’m Back! And Now…the “Road to Medicare…”

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I know it’s been a long time in coming. Most of you follow me on Facebook, so we haven’t truly been out of touch. But, wow! My life has been an amazing roller coaster of wonderfulness since Christmas. Yes, my last blog was about re-entering the Caregiving world. Truth be told, I was not happy about that. And it wasn’t even that dramatic. Well, it was for my husband, who had a serious leg injury, but for me it was “vanilla-caregiving-101.”

Since then, I’ve spent almost two months with my daughter welcoming our new grandchild and then a hasty return to presentations, TV appearances, having a caregiving script-in-hand read by professional actors, and working on getting more gigs to tell the world to get #prepared for the tsunami of caregiving!

I have neglected this blogosphere and I return renewed. I was truly thinking about what best serves my readers. And to look at my most well-received posts, I would say you guys love to laugh……….but even more, you love to be informed. So, like Bob Hope and Bing Crosby, our journey is going to be those “Road to…………” movies where we can have a laugh or two, but I’m going to teach you what I learn about all this aging, caregiving. long-term health care, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, nursing home, Elder law, estate issues blather as best I can.

Today…….the “Road to Medicare!” This could be 327 posts or more. In fact, it’s so chock-full of road blocks, potholes, orange cones, warning lights and yes, even smooth paving that we could have a blog about only this.

Lo and behold, I know someone who does that! And in my inbox this morning, she sent me three myths of Medicare. I had already decided to talk to you about our Medicare experience after dinner with friends last night when everyone was chiming in about signing up…and there in my inbox was Universe confirmation that yup, we need to talk about this.

My husband will turn 65 soon, and since I try to take my own advice, we called the Medicare Guru and asked her to guide us a bit. We are fortunate to have retirees’ insurance, and since I won’t turn age 65 for AGES (um hmmmm, had to say that), we knew this could be shark-infested waters. If we made a mistake in the sign-up process we could suffer some real financial consequences. The Guru gave us sage advice and the following week my hubby went online to sign up for Medicare.

Five minutes into a seven-minute process I hear, “Cathy!” Uh-oh. I run to the office to see consternation all over my husband’s face. There’s a trick question. Are you covered by your employers’ health care plan? Yes, we are, sort of. No box for that answer. I know it means, are you currently employed with health insurance? I know that because, well, because I know that. But lots of people don’t know that. Right next to the trick question on the computer screen is a teeny, tiny button with a question mark in a circle above it that says, “help.”

“Push that button,” I say to my husband. He looks at me like I told him to engage the nuclear codes. But he does it with a rivulet of sweat poring down his forhead. Right there in black and white it says, “this does not mean retiree insurance.” Hmm! Okay then. Up until that moment, my husband would have answered that one question, the only trick question for him, incorrectly. And that could’ve caused some real problems for us in the immediate future. And that is one teeny, tiny problem with signing up for Medicare.

Below are the three myths that the Medicare Guru, Joanne Giardini Russell at Boomer Health Group shared in my email today. You can reach Joanne or her associate Gwynn Sharick-Elberson at 248-871-7756. It’s free to talk to them. They are super nice! Tell them Cathy sent you! You will love them.

Joanne Giardini-Russell

810-599-7116 – mobile

248-871-7756, ext 101 – office

Check out this Video

Check out this video: https://share.vidyard.com/watch/rApnWNNRYtwo3KBSW58Y42?

It Ain’t Gettin’ Any Easier!

Caregivers, Humor, Medicare, , , , , , , , , ,

Pretty much every day, I am alarmed by little stories I find by scanning information about Elder issues.

My new friend Joanne Giardini-Russell, a true Medicare Guru, wrote an article this week about one of her clients who continued to go to work up to age 71. That, in itself, wasn’t a big surprise to me. If 60 is the new 40, working to age 70 or older,  is bound to happen more and more. Many of us actually like working.  Sure, many must keep working, and that is another article, for sure. But many people do work well into their 70’s and even 80’s. And those same hard-working people are often horrified about seemingly innocuous decisions they made (or didn’t make, by omission) and how they have placed themselves or their spouse into true fear of imminent destitution. Because of runaway health care costs.

You see, this guy’s venial sin was working too long and not retiring…..his mortal sin was not getting good information about how this affected his health insurance….more specifically Medicare. Suffice it to say that Joanne is trying to help this couple who have blown through more than $30,000…YES, THAT IS THIRTY THOUSAND DOLLARS…. of their own money, even though he had group insurance at work.

I don’t know this unfortunate couple’s story. But my guess is, they were not educated at work, they did not know how to use Medicare to their advantage at age 65, they did not take advantage of all the options at work for short-term disability and long-term disability, even if it required a contribution, and so on.

Those of us in this field are trying hard to get everyone to see the advantage of advanced planning instead of crisis planning. We are trying to work with your Financial Advisors,  your HR people at work, and quite frankly, anyone else who will listen, including you.

Find us. Ask us to come to your work and speak. Ask us questions on the internet machine!

Buy our books, yeah I said it. But let me ask you a question, if anyone could have saved thirty dollars, three thousand dollars, or thirty thousand dollars, by buying a book for fifteen dollars, would that be worth it? Yes, my friends, I think it would. #WhoMovedMyTeeth?

 

There is tons of good information out there. But you must find the experts, read things, ask questions and take action. Now is the time if you are a Baby Boomer, now is the time if your parents are in their 50’s and 60’s.

Oh, and to you Millennials and Gen-Xers….it’s never too late!

 

“You Just Have to…… Get Your Sh%$#@# Together…..and then you can Laugh all the way to the bank!”

Joanne doesn’t even know I’m telling you about her….so she will see this when you do.  If If you have any inkling that you want to discuss what you should do about signing up for Medicare:

Check out my friend Joanne at :

Boomer Health Group

Joanne Giardini-Russell, Medicare Guru

http://www.boomerhealthgroup.com/

 

 

Hot Fun In the Summertime…..

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Yay! It’s summer…..

If you are a Baby Boomer, or a baby,  or anyone…..it’s summer and you want to take a vacation! But guess what?!? People get sick on vacation, too!

I attended a Medicare seminar with my Mom the other day…and that is so another story…but one little-unnoticed tidbit stood out for me….Medicare won’t pay for your vacation illness, sort of.

Did you ever notice that everything we need to care about in aging is ‘sort of?’ I sort of have a knee problem; Insurance sort of covers that; Eggs are sort of good for you;  You sort of shouldn’t drink with that medication. I digress, sort of.

We finally reach the age where we want to travel, travel, travel and there’s a big ol’ mousetrap in the middle of it. You will be entering a Rube Goldberg universe of obstacles if you don’t prepare.

If you go on vacation with Medicare all by itself and don’t take any of its friends…nope, no good, won’t pay if you trip on the gangplank of the water taxi in Venice, or puke your way through the Galapagos Islands. Certain Medigap policies will cover you for 80% of the cost in your first two months of travel. Medicare Advantage might cover some aspects of an emergency, sort of.

So it’s all kinda’ sorta’.  You want to have a vacation and not just in the summer. You want to travel for fun and fun and more fun, while you’re healthy and can pay for it. C’mon universe…I earned this!

So what can you do?

  1. Call your insurance provider and ask…Do you cover travel? Domestically and abroad? Believe it or not, some Medicare Advantage will not cover you from state-to-state, so if you’re a snowbird….yikes! Check it out.
  2. Do you pay for airlifting? Getting me home from the Machu Picchu where I fell climbing the Stairs of Death on Wayna Picchu cause I forgot I wasn’t a Millennial? Do you?
  3. How do I file a claim for unexpected medical expenses when I get home?
  4. What if my preexisting condition requires some unexpected medical care while I’m traveling, do you cover that? Presumably, if you have a preexisting condition, your health insurance carrier already knows that.

But what can you do that’s best?

Dig down deep in your heart and your pocketbook and buy travel insurance. Make sure it covers all these possibilities. Because the truth of the matter is, it’s a few extra hundred dollars. If you’re paying thousands to take a glorious trip, don’t be cheap or chintzy now. Rest assured, you will probably not use it. And then thank your lucky stars, if you need it.

 

Bon Voyage!  Love ya’, mean it!

“You Just have to Laugh…..”

©2018 Cathy Sikorski

Just Tell the Truth………..

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I took a friend in for some out-patient surgery.  Her anesthesiologist told her that she was only going to have a sedative, like the one you get for a colonoscopy. In other words, it would not be general anesthesia. He explained that the difference. General anesthesia relaxes all the muscles, whereas the sedative just makes you sleepy. The good news is she asked to be extra-sleepy and he was totally down with that.

When I was finally allowed back to help my friend get dressed, hear her discharge instructions and get her in the wheelchair to go home, I could see that she was quite a bit loopy. She couldn’t remember everything the doctor had said. She couldn’t remember exactly why her tongue was like sandpaper.  And she was uncertain of her discharge instructions.

All of which was fine, because that’s why I was there. I came as her ‘person.’ It’s pretty much standard that you bring your person to surgery with you. In fact, I highly recommend in all my seminars that you take someone with you to every serious doctor’s appointment, lawyer’s appointment, and financial advisor. Four ears are always better than two.

You absolutely must take a driver to the hospital with you when you are having any kind of sedative. You must. And yet…..

Our discharge nurse told us the tale of how some people try to pretend that their ‘person’ is coming, just not at the moment. I get that. We had to be at the hospital at 6:30 AM. Not many people want to get up in the dark to take someone to the hospital. Maybe you have a tag-team of players. You got your ‘early-riser’ and you got your ‘picker-upper.’ That’s fine. Just so long as someone is there to hear the instructions and take you home, get your meds and put you to bed.

But apparently, there is an underground of people who drive themselves, or get an Uber, or somehow show up alone. They give the intake nurse a fake phone number of their ‘picker-upper,’ and go in and get that surgery. regardless of how they are getting home.

Our nurse said she gets fake phone numbers, lies about family or friends coming, lies about where their car is when the wheelchair is at the door, lies about even where they are going to go after surgery.

If only there was a nose indicator.

She thinks that it’s because people may be private, or stubborn, or just that they don’t want to inconvenience anyone. I told her, I thought all of that is likely true.

But there’s also another possibility. Some people really don’t have a ‘person.’  They just don’t. So if you have a  person. Or you can choose a person from column A or column B. Please do two things. Please don’t be dumb and go it alone…chose a person. You need them. You need them for information, for remembering and for your safety as well as for the safety of every single person trying to get home that day. Just be honest.

And two……….be ever so grateful you have a person. And maybe you can offer to be a person someday.

“You Just have to Laugh……and be a person.”

©2018 Cathy Sikorski

Don’t Pay Those Medical Bills…..Part Deux

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I’m back…..and boy do I have a story for you!

I try so hard to let you all know the important things going on in caregiving both legally and practically. It’s so difficult for us to stay abreast of all this crazy, complex information. And yet, I too, fall prey to the insidious actions of those who would undermine all of us.

I did the one thing, the one thing I tell all of you not to do.  Okay, I didn’t actually do it, but I sat side-by-side with my husband and watched him do the ONE THING I TELL ALL OF YOU NOT TO DO.

Here’s the tale:

My husband was having a routine colonoscopy. He hates that I share personal information, but in this case, it’s critical that you know exactly that. For your protection, he’s allowing me to reveal he has routine medical care. Yes, he’s that great.

The day before the procedure, my husband gets a call from the hospital. They tell him that they have called our insurance and he will have to pay a  $1,190 co-pay. Yes, that is One Thousand One hundred Ninety Dollars.

This seemed really odd to me. Routine care is always covered. But I will admit that even with relatively good health insurance, we have been paying larger and larger sums every year for co-pays, deductibles, and God-forbid, out-of-network costs.

Since the hospital said they checked with our insurance and this would be our co-pay, we took the checkbook to the hospital.

Now, I bitched about this to anyone who would listen.

“Can you believe this? Almost $1200 for a CO-PAY for a ROUTINE COLONOSCOPY? No wonder people get cancer! No wonder they won’t get routine tests! That’s a mortgage payment for lots of people! That’s a car payment! Hell, that’s a mortgage payment AND a car payment for most people!

I was hopping mad. We are fortunate that we could pay, but it’s not without a big “OUCH.” I also know that there are many, many people who absolutely cannot afford $1200 out of nowhere for a ROUTINE PREVENTATIVE MEDICAL PROCEDURE. Yes, I’m yelling. Yes, I’m using exclamation points. I was pissed.

When we got to the hospital, the clerk asked how much did we want to put down on our colonoscopy. Like it was a car, a house, or some nice furniture.  Because they were not taking him back there for those great drugs until we made some kind of a downpayment. For God’s sake.  We just don’t want cancer….which clearly we probably wouldn’t be able to pay for either.

But I sat there, speechless, as my husband wrote a check for $1,190.

And then I got the EOB. That ‘s the Explanation of Benefits. I read every one, just to make sure our medical bills were processed and to see how much of a bill I can expect.

Guess what? The EOB for my husband’s colonoscopy showed that it was a routine procedure and we did not owe anything. Not because we owed a co-pay or a deductible that we paid in advance…but because WE DIDN’T OWE ANYTHING.

Yep. We called the hospital and the billing department said: “Oh, that’s just an estimate that they give you, they don’t really know what you will owe.  We will return all your money. But you need to wait at least two weeks.”

My husband is the calm one in this house. Thank God, because they would only discuss this with him. If I had a crowbar, a siren, or a hammer that phone call would have gone so very differently.

P.S. My husband would not have checked the EOB….and I feel very certain that $1190 would have disappeared forever.

Soooooooooooooo……DO NOT PAY THOSE MEDICAL BILLS…………….JUST WAIT. I wrote the book on it and still had to be reminded the hard way.

“You Just have to Laugh……..and take your own advice……”

©2018 Cathy Sikorski

Clean Up, Clean Up, Everybody, Everywhere…….

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I have been trying to give you wonderful readers important information about aging, healthcare, and caregiving. It just hasn’t been that humorous, now has it?

Let’s change it up. Just for laughs.

My Mom has bravely embraced her new Smart Phone. But, oh the journey. Almost on a daily basis, she struggles with re-learning how to delete messages, listen to messages, text a message, delete texts and just answer the damn phone.

What’s fascinating about this…and I notice it with my other friends ‘of a certain age’, is that she is obsessed with “cleaning out” her phone. There can be no messages in the inbox. No texts hanging around when she has ended the conversation. No emails that offensively fill up her mailbox when she must make room for more email that may arrive at any moment. I usually have to stop her from doing what this guy is doing.

 

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via GIPHY

I’ve tried to explain that those texts and emails can stay there as long as she needs them. If she wants to look at a text later, share it with someone, or just remember what someone texted her, there is no need to clean up five minutes after the conversation ends.

via GIPHY

This is the deal….you clean up your mess. You clean up after yourself. You make your bed. You wash the dirty dishes. You do not leave them in the sink for someone else. You vacuum, dust, and tidy up every day, all the time. You do this because you never know who may show up at your door, or what emergency may ensue and someone will be unexpectedly in your lair. And you do it with an Entemann’s cake on hand, just in case.

Your phone is no different. God forbid someone sees that you have 15 messages in your queue. You have 42 unread emails. You have not cleaned up your mess. Anyone can pick up your phone and see what an absolute slob you are. A disgrace.

I, myself, often have 1500 messages floating around in my email. This drives many people insane. But not me. I don’t care. I really don’t. Then again, I’m cleaning up at 11:00 PM for my cleaning lady, who bravely shows up tomorrow. Maybe I’d be better if this guy were coming.

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via GIPHY

 

On top of all this, while my mom is riding next to me in my car, feeling quite smug since we tidied up her phone, I catch her looking through the camera lens of the phone, just to see what is in the hole.

 

via GIPHY

Yeah, I caught you.

“You Just have to Laugh……”

©2018 Cathy Sikorski

Don’t Pay Those Medical Bills.

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Yes, I said it. Countless times I have run into weary-worn caregivers who are frustrated by the overwhelming cost of care. According to AARP, out-of-pocket (OOP) costs for caregivers can be upwards of twenty percent of a caregiver’s income.

https://www.aarp.org/caregiving/financial-legal/info-2017/out-of-pocket-cost-report.html

And this is only getting worse.

I often find that clients of mine or even those I’m caring for are quick to pay any medical bill that comes to their mailbox. I encourage you to STOP that right now. We in caregiving and Elder healthcare know that there are many documents that come to our door that say: ‘This is Not a Bill.” And yet it looks like a bill, it sounds like a bill and it often has wording that indicates, “your share of expenses.” I’m sure you’ve found, as I have, that with my mother’s generation:”If it’s a bill, you pay it.” Even if it just ‘looks’ like a bill, many seniors will pay it, just to get it off their plate and to do the right thing.

Unquestionably, we should not pay something that says, “This is Not a Bill.” I’ve been able to either take those away, sneak them out of the house, or train my caregivees not to pay them. That has made a significant in-road into this problem. But it is the real bills that can cost you more than you know.

I tell the tale of a bill I received for my brother-in-law from the hospital for $4500.00, after his death. He had excellent health insurance and was ill for many months prior to his death, so this bill seemed far too exorbitant based on what I knew about his insurance. Every month for a year, I received this bill. Every two or three months, after I called to inquire if they had submitted it correctly to insurance, if they had processed the bill, or if they had calculated all the insurance discounts, they would tell me to wait as the bill was still in process. But they continued to send me the bill, even though they were waiting for payment.

I could have paid that bill ten times before it was properly processed. The actual final bill was $0.00. Yes, zero dollars and zero cents. Just try getting back $4500.00 you’ve overpaid because you were hasty to ‘pay’ a bill. And as I alluded to at the beginning of this article, often caregivers pay these bills out of their own pocket. Don’t do that either, if you can help it, ever. That discussion is for another day.

But for now, when you receive a bill, make sure it is correct. Make sure it has been processed both by Medicare and your Medigap policy, if you have one. Make sure you have received all your proper discounts. Don’t ever be afraid to call and question a bill. Never be afraid to wait, just wait and see if the bill has been processed properly. You can and will save yourself money, frustration and maybe even some heartburn.

Then perhaps you can have the last laugh!

“You Just have to Laugh……….”

©2018 Cathy Sikorski

With Facebook Friends like this…Who Needs Enemies?

Caregivers, Humor, , , , , , , , , , , ,

Two years ago, my Mom called me, practically in tears.

“Roberta was so mean to me,” she said.

I’m thinking, “who the hell is Roberta?”.

“She’s from my medical insurance carrier. I called to ask her why a bill wasn’t paid and she said I should never have been given this insurance and I’m going to have to pay back every penny from the last 15 years.”

“And,” she went on with a worried tone, “you told me to NEVER pay a medical bill. So I don’t know what to do.”

“Calm down, Mom. We will get this worked out. It will be okay.”

My first reaction was this:

I did tell my Mom never to pay a medical bill because her insurance covers everything.

My mom has Tricare For Life Medical Insurance. This insurance is for Veterans and their families, spouses, widows, children. My Dad died in a helicopter crash as an Army pilot on October 10, 1961. My mother had five children all under the age of 10 and was pregnant with her sixth child. So I kind of think my Mom is entitled to this insurance.

The thing is, Mom never claimed this insurance until my step-father passed away in 1998. She didn’t even ask for it. She already had Medicare and AARP. But when she applied for her widow’s the Veteran’s Administration made her jump through all kinds of hoops with documentation and then GAVE her this insurance.

My mom is a Virgo.

Why does that matter? She has kept every single piece of paper that has ever come into her life. So she has every piece of documentation that transpired fifteen years ago with the Veteran’s Administration. The VA put her on the wrong insurance.

So two years ago, they began threatening an 87-year-old widow, who raised her family of six children without a father, a man never even made it to 30 years old, that she would be thousands of dollars in debt to them because of their mistake.

After talking to seven different people at seven different government administrative places which most people never even heard of, we refiled all the documentation from 15 years ago.

I wrote much of this post two years ago.  And much of the problem has been resolved after mountains of paperwork and dozens of phone calls…one that occurred while I was drinking in Times Square. Hey, if they call, you answer, because they may never call back.

I said this two years ago, probably after the drinking incident in Times Square:

 I know from the last 25 years of caregiving and jumping through administrative hoops that this story will not have an easy ending. There’s going to be reams of paperwork. There will likely be boatloads of nastiness. There may be a lawsuit. But in my best, Scarlett O’Hara voice: “As God is my witness….my mother will never pay one dime to fix this problem.”

There’s one small problem that persists. The government agencies just can’t agree and  are trying to collect $687 from my sweet ol’ mom that they think they are owed from overpayments. I still have people in all these agencies working on it and I have not yet caved to paying money to make it go away, but still…..I am amused by the latest missive from one of the insurers trying to collect funds:

Fun things to do while fighting with Insurance
Like us On Facebook……Indeed.

Hmmmm…..I’m struggling with that friend request.

©Cathy Sikorski 2018