Sylvia, I am glad you are felling better, health insurance can really be frustrating and very expensive.
I am on Medicare Part A and B, and I am enrolled in a medicare approved plan called
Secure Horizons, so far so good on the plan, and it doesn't cost any more than the Medicare Plan.
You might want to look into it.
Josephine.
Silverfluter??????
I am hoping you get the kind of care you deserve, Sylvia. And I'm praying for a bit of good luck to get you through the rest of this. My DH has the VA for medical care (100% disabled). He has Medicare A and B also...even though the VA can't bill Medicare...I think he's required to keep it. Actually, we prefer that he has Medicare. Sometimes the VA doctors just blow him off when he really needs help, and we need to have another option when he has to go elsewhere.
All this medicare/insurance stuff is so confusing, I think I'll need mental therapy in addition to a regular doctor when I get to that point. It's always been confusing, but now it's so confusing that the people who get paid to do the paper work are confused. We have very little insurance, because the whole industry just seems like a crap shoot to us.
Sylvia I do hope things get better quick. It sounds like maybe they are headed that way. I think it's a good thing you changed doctors too. Having a doctor you don't like is not a good thing, no matter how good he is.
Josephine, be careful with Secure Horizons.Have you checked their out of network clauses? ... ...Medicare will pay claims from anywhere... Linda you are right about the VA! thats exactly what they did for my brother. If my SIL had gotten my bother on Medicare I think he would be alive today. Marylee if you think its confusing for yop think about me... I do this for a living. :) If you are that confused keep your Medicare and get a good secondary plan.. I really dont have anything against Medicare if thats all you have. I just dont like being coercsid into doing something or not having any control. i.e.having to use Medicare when I have commercial benefits through my employer. Thank God I had my surgery in time ... it would be hell getting a good doctor who will accept medicare rates.
Anyway I have a RN who comes to vist me three times a week ... paid at a 100% by Part A. lol
So true, Sylvia, he wouldn't be disabled to the extent he is now if the VA had better care. I try to keep them from doing more harm to him, but it isn't easy. Those disabled vets deserve the best and what they get is mostly residents and med students rotating from the county medical school and hospital. There's a few good ones...once in a while he gets one that I like. I have CHAMPVA, which I think might be a little better than Medicare, and a supplement for it so I don't have to go to the VA for medical care. So far, after the deductibles every year (not bad) everything's taken care of eventually except for an occasional item that turns out to be over-the-counter.
Sylvia, I didn't know that was your job. I'm so sorry. I don't have Medicare yet because I'm only 53, but I dread the time that I get to the age that I need it. I really don't think it's reasonable to expect people to figure this stuff out. It's worse than a bowl of spaghetti.
Linda Champus is good ... its just that I have to figure if its active duty or retiree benifits .. One of those plans cover everything at a 100% and thats the one I think requires a refferral.. Champus do pay claims good, but still I cringe when I get a champus pt I have two pages of notes plastered on the wall in my office ... to try and keep up with! lol but that active duty and non active drives me crazy, why would you change a pts benefit for a thrity day leave of absence.?
Marylee I still marvel at your age .. so stop flaunting it will you. LOL Remember I told you I thought you were my age until I met you at the RU ... all that beautiful hair I thought was gray is platinum. lol
btw my insurance is still up in the air. I was informed today that I have UHC instead of Aetna effective 0. 1/01/07 ... my Phisical Therapist came today saying they finally got it all sorted out. I dont have Medicare I have Aetna. LOL I felt so bad for her when I told her I am now United Healthcare. ... which means no more PT.
Marylyn, well one of my problems may be solved. We'll see if it comes back. Menopause sure makes life interesting. The fact that my blood pressure is back up to ll0 over 60 is a good sign. Three weeks ago it was 70 over 50. For all the people out there with high blood pressure problems, this may be hard to understand, but blood pressure this low is not a good thing. Partly because doctors haven't got a clue to what to do about it. But since I don't have insurance I guess it's a good thing I have low blood pressure instead of high. For the first time in 6 months I felt like working in my yard. And boy did it ever need it! Dh suggested that I dig up everything I want to keep and spray the rest with Roundup. It's a mess.
Sylvia, lol. I do get some interesting comments on my hair. I get my hair genes from my Dad. We both started turning gray in our 20's. That continued til I was probably 40 and then started turning white. I desperately wanted blond hair when I was a teenager. Well, I finally got it!
Marylee you got to watch that low blood pressure too. too much of and the vertigo starts. eat plenty of bananas and watch your pottassium count. I am a victim of vertigo.
I think maybe we better stop with the medical issues ,,, we will start depressing everyone. lol
I need to gp out and take some pics of my new backyard. I got about two hundred pots abck there full of dead plants or so some people think. 90% are Hostas regenerating themselves. ..aint nothing I can do about it now. I am scared to walk out there for fear of falling on huge roots and stuff.. I have this landsacper guy who is going turn the soil for me ... but I got to get all the pots out the way.
Oh, Sylvia, be careful. I hope all those plants didn't freeze. So far all my hostas ( all l0 of them:) ) look OK. Atleast they're not mushy. Some even have little green things peeking out.
I wish I could come and help you with your pots, but Dallas is a little out of our way.:) I hope you can make it to the RU.
Mary Lee
I started dyeing my hair when I was 14. My mom found my first grey hair at 2. Stopped pulling them at 8. I couldn't take being a teenager with grey hair. And they showed up really well since I had dark brown hair. Now I'm completely white headed.... I dye it blond.
Well, I can't wait to meet you Renatelynne. If we can't both make it to the RU, we'll have to arrange to meet somehow. Were your parents also prematurely gray?
My dad has those same grey hair genes! He started going grey when he was 16 and bald when he was 19. My sister and I figure we got the better half of the deal. LOL We both started getting grey hairs at 16, too. She dyes hers, but I'm allergic to the dyes (and make-up, and most kinds of soap, and...) so mine is now mostly grey with some brown highlights.
Well, no offense intended towards anyone who uses dyes, but I think the world would be better off without those nasty smelly things.:) Nothing that smells that bad can be good for you.
Renatelynn, maybe we can meet at the African Violet Nursery sometime. It's getting to be that time of year for me to migrate that way anyway.:)
sure.. we only live about an hour away from each other. The kind of dye I use doesn't have a bad smell. It is the ones with amonia that smell. There are plenty of hair dyes that are more natural and don't hurt as much.
Yeah, and I received my dearly loved grandfather's genes for white hair. When my dark auburn hair started turning white when I was in my late 20's, I started using color. I mix two shades of Loreal and get something close to the shade I might have had at my age otherwise. I still have the freckles, so why not?
oh... and YES.. I got white hair genes from BOTH sides of my family.
Not very many people have CHAMPVA coverage as far as I know, because it's just for dependents of veterans who are rated 100% disabled by the VA. Not all that many 100% vets out there. I know there must some differences between that and Champus, but I don't know what they are other than the fact one the first is administered by the VA.