Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

I have now received from Aetna, in order, a SilverScripts card (prescription drug coverage only), followed by a letter saying that they couldn't process my request for enrollment in a Medicare Advantage plan for 2025, and now a Medicare Advantage card that was printed on Nov. 1, 2024.

I called Aetna two days ago, after receiving the letter saying there was a problem with the enrollment. I think the 2025 plan application is now sorted out, but I should call Medicare and ask what they know about my 2024 and 2025 coverage.

The Social Security Administration has just told me how much they will be giving me every month, and also that I have been enrolled in Medicare, covarage starting May 2024. So, the Medicare covarage is retroactive to a few months before they ruled in my favor.

Also, the monthly benefit is more than I was expecting them to award me, which is also good news.

There are things I need to look into, and do, about this, but I'm not going to do them at this hour of the day. I think it involves a call to the lawyer.

I got a letter yesterday, dated August 2nd, saying they have received my request for reconsideration, and to contact them if any of the following are incorrect:

I am making this request; I am submitting additional evidence; and I am represented by Lindsay Rand, who is an attorney.

I logged in to their site to see what "additional evidence" they are referring to, and it looks like there is no additional evidence, but I should probably check with the lawyer and/or the agent assigned to my case. cattitude thinks I should call the lawyer, tell him I got this letter, and ask him what if anything I should do about it.

The letter also means that they have my correct address. I don't know whether they updated that when they got the request for reconsideration, or they already had it and my first rejection letter is lost in the mail.

Thanks to my congresswoman's office, I now have (a PDF of) the letter saying that Social Security is denying my application for disability benefits. That is dated June 6th. The only thing that's clear about reasons (beyond that they turn down a lot of people) is that they couldn't reach the psychiatrist I was seeing for three years. However, it took me about three minutes this morning to find a phone number for her at the VA hospital, so I can provide that information.

I sent messages to two attorneys who handle this sort of case in the Boston area, and hope to hear back from one of them in the next day or so.

ETA: One of them has already called me back about an hour ago. He will be sending me paperwork so I can designate him as my representative, and other paperwork so he can talk to my doctors. He has an office in Braintree, but when I said I'd rather do a video appointment, he said we could do that or over the telephone, so we will schedule a call or zoom or something.

Also, looking at it again, they not only didn't find Dr. Segal, I don't know whether they talked to my current neurologist. It says they got information from "Mt Auburn neurology" and from one previous neurologist, Dr. Katz.

It has been more than a month since I got email saying that my application for disability benefits had been rejected, and an explanation would be coming in the mail*. I have not received an explanation, or any other mail from them. I have now left two phone messages with the person at their office who was assigned to my case, asking how I can appeal the rejection without having received that paperwork.

So far, my contact hasn't answered. There's a 60-day window for appealing the decision. I'm not sure of the right thing to do here. Things that have occurred to me: (a) look for a lawyer to help; (b) file an appeal online to avoid missing the deadline, even though the first page of that process implies that I should have answers to what they have; (c) ask my congresswoman's office for help.

Does anyone know a Massachusetts lawyer or organization that helps with this, or have other suggestions?

*What I actually got was an email saying "we have made a decision, log in to see it" and that got me the bare-bones answer.

I am now a naturalized German citizen.

I went to the consulate this morning, where I signed a form and was told some things of varying usefulness, then, and now have the official naturalization certificate. The things I was told include that if I want to visit Germany I will need to get a German passport, that from now on they will be dealing with me entirely in German and it would be a good idea to learn some, and the much less important fact Germans write dates day-month-year. The man who was explaining this pointed at the paperwork, and realized that today isn't a useful example, being 2/2. The paperwork he gave me included a couple of pages about German data protection law: he said "we feel strongly about this" and I told him I agree with them. (I think I can file that mentally as "the GDPR applies.")

The man also gave me a lapel pin with the German and American flags, as appropriate to a dual citizen.

I came home, had lunch, and played Scrabble with cattitude. And now I am going to dive back into the Social Security disability questionnaire.

I just spent a frustratingly long time trying to figure out what health insurance plan we should buy (Massachusetts, via HealthConnector). The hard part was finding out how much different companies would charge us for what looks like essentially the same level of coverage. I know I'm not eligible for MassHealth, that's not what I was asking it, but I had a lot of trouble finding the information I wanted.

The state's plan comparison tool was useful for finding plans that our doctors are in-network for. Once I had it narrowed down that way, that tool helped me figure out that there is no significant difference between different companies' same-level plans in terms of co-pays and such.

So, after far too much work, I wanted to compare monthly premiums, which was more difficult than it should have been. I finally found that information, and it looks like the plan we have now is our best choice, but we'd stayed with that plan for a couple of years out of inertia.

Yes it could be worse: we have plausible options, and I think we'll be getting a tax credit that covers most of our premiums.

I have pre-ordered tomato and cucumber plants for next spring, from GrowJoy, the company I got my cucumbers from this year. I will be getting Paul Robeson and Yellow Brandywine tomatoes, plus one cherry tomato plant and some cucumber plants that they recommend for container gardening. I jumped on this as soon as they opened for pre-orders, not just because I had trouble finding plants last spring, but because Paul Robeson and Yellow Brandywine are heirloom varieties that I learned about in Washington, which I haven't seen in Boston-area farmers markets.

I have been vaccinated against the flu. I made an appointment after breakfast, for 1:30 this afternoon, and everything went smoothly. They had appointments available throughout the day; I got to CVS a little early, checked in, and at 1:30 a man called my name, told me that the injection site might be a little sore for a day or two, and vaccinated me. I'd filled out the relevant forms online, when I made the appointment, so he didn't have to ask much besides confirming that he had the right person.

We now have a topographic map of the immediate area on our study wall. I ordered it from the US Geological Survey a few weeks ago, it arrived last week, and this afternoon cattitude got out the blue-tack and a level and put it up.

After some annoying back-and-forth, I have confirmed with the Registry of Motor Vehicles that if I renew my "REALID" state ID card between now and the end of the state of emergency, it will cost $25 instead of $50. I don't know if they'll make me go to an RMV office at some point in the future when that's safe again. (The flyer they sent me was unclear, and the website didn't help, so I sent an email rather than spending $25 now and possibly being charged another $50 later. And then I sent another email, quoting chunks of their flyer to be very clear about what I wanted to know, because the first reply hadn't answered my question.) I will fill out the forms, and give them the $25, tomorrow.

After looking at the latest color-coded state COVID map, with the red blotch at the north end of Middlesex County, I made another donation to Bread and Roses Lawrence. I first donated to them a couple of years ago, after the gas explosion up there, and yes, that's partly because of the name.

I did a bit more text-banking today, mostly following up on conversations started by other people hours or days earlier. It's more congenial work: still at least 85% variations on "STOP" and "take me off your list," but also the chance to answer a few more interesting questions, like the dates for Ohio early voting and (on Slack) what "I'm PEV all the way" meant: that's the Arizona Permanent Early Voting List, which I knew about from phone-banking in August urging people to get on that list. Now they're sending out texts asking people whether they are planning to vote by mail, in person early, or in person on Election Day.

I have dealt with the RMV bureaucracy, and now have a paper temporary ID while I wait for the plastic card to arrive in the mail ("about ten days"). The clerk looked at, and then kept, my previous ID, with the Somerville address; fortunately, I did the COA when we moved from Arlington to Somerville online, so I have that card and put it in my wallet when I got home.

The whole thing took longer than I expected, partly because the MBTA website had actively confusing directions, so I spent an annoying amount of time wandering around Watertown Square before I found the correct bus stop, long enough that I decided to stop for lunch before getting on the bus. (It didn't help that both ends of the 70 bus route are "Central Square," one in Cambridge and the other in Waltham.)

Once at the MBTA, it was mostly tedious: they check paperwork first, and hand out numbers like "S-64" or "M-45," and then announce "now serving M-50 at window 11." There are enough lines, moving fast enough, to produce frequent announcements, which is good but made it hard to read while I waited.

When I got to the counter, the clerk suggested I wait until November, because "there's no rush" and it would be cheaper. Getting a new ID card because of a change of address (with or without "real ID") costs $25, as do renewals without moving (or, I think, getting a new "real ID" card without moving), but a renewal with change of address costs $25, not $50. My ID expires on my birthday in 2020, about 15 months from now, and a COA less than a year before the expiration date would count as a renewal, which this doesn't. I told him I still wanted to do it, which was as much because of the amount of time I'd already put in as because I want to have this before I renew my passport.

After my previous post, thinking about the amount of paperwork they're demanding for this, I realized something odd: it looks as though someone could get a "real ID" using the name and paperwork of a family member or housemate. The RMV will accept the combination of an official birth certificate, social security card, utility bill, and W-2 form, all of which someone might have at home where a friend, relative, or even burglar could find them. However, they won't accept a current US passport (which is proof of both identity and "right of residence" in the US), plus a utility bill and credit card statement, even though they can and did check online that the social security number I gave them goes with my name.

Because it's not about protecting individuals from identity theft, it's about more about making it harder for people to get ID--the new federally-imposed requirement for two different kinds of proof of address makes that pretty clear.

siderea points out the large hidden costs of all the forms doctors and patients are now required to fill out, and suggests a way of pushing back against those requirements, by making them visible.