hrj

I had a breakthrough today on the Medicare Part B issue. I finally had a day when I had space in my schedule to hang out on hold with the local SSA office, and by luck I wasn't booted off immediately for the wait time being too long.

So I talked to a human being, gave her my info about my Medicare Part B application, and she activated it right then and there. (Alas, she didn't have the power to do that for my retirement benefits.) So in 24 hours, my status should be live in the system and I can get back to Kaiser about starting my Medicare Advantage. Yay for no coverage gap!

(I seem to be incapable of typing "Medicare" correctly the first time unless being very very careful. It keeps coming out "Medicate.")

So I now have a second "poke" in the system about the retirement benefit and she said if there's been no movement in a couple of weeks to check back and they can get a manager involved. "A couple of weeks" is at my retirement date, but this is less critical for the Social Security payments because I get back-pay from when I requested it to start (February) and I have plenty of savings to tide me over.