The Best Way to Save Money....
May. 28th, 2021 01:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
captainsblog...is not to spend it in the first place. Yesterday was a good day for that.
We continue to count down to July 1, when Eleanor officially becomes a Medicare member. She's been planning this for a long time, and the planning involves extensive research she began doing way back last fall. I summarized a lot of the minefield (or rabbitfield, since it was the first of the month) that prospective Medicarers have to go through to get full coverage. For the only "free" part of the deal ("free" meaning "what you paid in to the system for since the 1970s" in our cases) is hospitalization. Basic routine coverage beyond that requires a premium that will begin to be deducted from her Social Security starting in July, for her of around $145 a month. But those are just the minimum things; co-pays and uncovered services and, oh yeah, MEDICATIONS all require that you either sign up for additional Parts or Plans. Meds are relatively straightforward and she's picked a "Part D" plan that will come out of our health savings account and cover just about all of what she's on now. Then, though, you have to
If you click the link above (the text one, not the Minions), you'll see all the options and choices and bullshit she had to go through. Complicating things is,... no, ARE many things. For one, Medicare planners chose to label their Gap plans by letter, which is how the basic components of coverage are also labeled: A for hospitalization, B for basic health care and D for drugs. Gap plans are labeled A through N, not all are available in all states, and many have condition restrictions if you don't sign up for them either at the very beginning or during annual open enrollment.
But what about Medicare Part C?. I hear you wonder. THAT's what goes by "Medicare Advantage," a deal with the devil when the devil was Bill Clinton that let HMOs get into the lucrative Old People Business by "simplifying" all these choices. The Blues and (in our area) Redshirts put a ton of advertising into these options, year round but especially during open enrollment each fall. In exchange for them sweet gummint dollars, they provide everything you've come to expect from those same insurance companies: paperwork, claim denials, networks and wherever they can, exclusions for pre-existing conditions. New York is better at limiting the latter than some states, but Eleanor had no interest in this alternative, and 90 percent of the junk mail we've gotten since she "signed up" for Medicare without picking specific plans consists of pitches for one Advantage option or another.
I'll let HER tell the story of how she saved us over $400 on a non-Advantage gap plan yesterday:
I reduced my annual health costs by $445 today!
That may not seem like much (it does to me), but I'm retiring at the end of next month, and I'm looking at any way to save on recurring, unavoidable expenses.
I did all kinds of research on Medicare, starting last fall. I attended, virtually, a seminar about it, how it works, which went into great detail. I have a spreadsheet, and I literally took screenshots from the seminar and pasted them into the spreadsheet. It was no surprise to me that the person conducting the seminar talked very quickly, so much so that I believe she'd make a damn good auctioneer. For cattle. Her goal was to sign people up for a service her organization provides. For seven hundred dollars, they will gather and analyze all your statistics, then tell you which plans would work for you.
I did my own analysis, kept the seven hundred dollars, and prepared.
Last week I signed up for a supplemental plan. It wasn't the one I expected to sign up for, it was another one, but it's fine. I had misinterpreted some of the jargon used in this industry, but by the end of the phone call, I understood that better, and I felt comfortable with my choice.
Except that, seven days later, I still had no email confirmation of what I'd bought. No membership card via snail mail. I went online to find out the status of my application. I jumped through hoop after hoop, no deal. The breaking point was when their system told me my email address was already being used with another account, therefore I needed to give them a new email. O.O I'm reminded of a cereal ad on TV from my youth:
"Silly rabbit"
There is no way anyone else has MY email address and is somehow in the organization's system. That fallacy was repeated, over and over. I finally used their chat service, to try to get this straightened out. The individual who responded was clearly working off a list of appropriate responses to customers' issues. I gave up and called. I encountered ONE decent customer service person, so lovely that I wrote down her name, and intend to write to the organization to praise her. Everyone else seemed woefully inadequate to the task, or their equipment was faulty or overloaded.
I hung up, resigned to giving it some more time.
Then I started rummaging through our junk mail. We have a paper bag which we'd used as a repository for all the junk mail pertaining to Medicare. Thinking I'd arrived at my decision, I started looking at it.
Its composition: mostly stuff pertaining to Advantage plans, some about drug plans, a few promoting seminars of the sort I'd already attended, and one batch of documents from AARP, pertaining to Supplemental plans, which is what I just bought.
Examining it, I realized the price, for the same plan I'd already bought, was $39.10 less a month. I stewed, I reasoned with myself, then I started going back and looking at what documentation I had from the supplier I'd signed up with. Except that the amount of documentation I had was problematic. Eight days after signing up, I had no membership card, nor had I anything in writing, electronic or snail mail, detailing what I bought. Therefore, if there was any clause saying I couldn't cancel, I had no proof of it.
I went online again, and searched for Supplement Medicare Plans for New York State. Google gave me an answer of GoMedigap, among other things. I clicked on it. Entered my name, birthdate, and zip code. They provided a list of plans available to me; I selected the one I want, and the broker-type organization gave me one choice of carrier: the one I'd already signed with. I did not give up. I called them, got a sales agent, who started in with the niceties, the standard, "What can I help you find today?"
I told him I would cut to the chase, and briefly described what I'd done and learned in the previous week and minutes, ending with the fact that I knew I could get what I'd already bought, for less, and I said from whom. He said, yes, and I can sign you up for that.
He then did, and instructed me to cancel the other application. Along the way, he was pleasant and attentive. Listened when I told him that the support people at company H were poorly trained or inadequately supplied with technology to do their jobs, with one exception.
Ultimately, I asked him why on his company website, the only carrier promoted was company H, when clearly company UA was an option too. His response was diplomatic, but I really didn't think it would matter.
Then I cancelled the original purchase. The company H phone system didn't allow for cancellations, so it shunted me to a salesperson. He said he'd transfer me to someone who could help me, but first, could he ask why, and I told him. He then said, but you signed electronically, right? I brushed this aside, saying, but that's moot at this point. So yeah, he was prepared with arguments that weren't true arguments, that held no water, yet I'm sure many people would be intimidated into accepting them, and acquiescing to their bullshit. Words can only poorly express the contempt I feel for that kind of tactic.
----
So there's 400 saved. We then proceeded to save another couple hundred on my stupid car.
I finally made an appointment to get my snow tires off. This is the yang to the yin that also occurred late last year, for while Eleanor was researching gaps and how to fill them, I was working on tires and how to get them to not kill me. Long story short (and the long story's in that non-Minion link), our longtime repair guy's right-hand man got a little left-handed and put the wrong size tires on the car and then moved the rims to the wrong wheels when he put the right sized ones on. This popped an idiot light that only the Evil Dealer could clear and who wound up charging several hundred bucks to undo the placement. So we made clear, when the tires came up for re-swapping, that we expected some accommodation for the mishap. And we got it: only $40 total to remove the snows (which barely had 3,000 miles on them from this winter even this late) and balance and mount the summer ones.
But the savings weren't finished. Eleanor also asked them to check a recommended repair that Evil Dealer had also spotted back in December- a replacement of some front end bars that were causing the little car to bounce like a bad check whenever he hit any kind of resistance in the road. Their price was over $400; our guys did it for just over half that. Loyalty pays: some Karens would have been angrier or demanded more than we asked for, but we would be looking for a mechanic as reliable, as honest and as fair as the one who wasn't perfect once.
----
And then there's the cat, who's not Evil but definitely gots herself some 'tude.
We dropped JARVIS off after I got home from Rochester on Wednesday, so we had just Eleanor's car for the day yesterday. I drove in first thing, but realized we forgot to give Zoey her morning eye meds, so I came home around 11.
Little shit was nowhere to be seen. We checked all her usual hidey-holes in the room she's been turtling in, in closets, under chairs and in some of her favorite places in the cellar where Eleanor hadn't seen her while working down there. We finally resolved to let it go for now; we left a few treats in her "room" and shut the door so the little delinquents wouldn't get them, and I then decided to do something I'd never done in the six years since moving to my current office location:
I walked to work.
It was a gorgeous coolish day, I had no clients to see or commitments to get to, so why not? I'd taken my bike there a few times over the years, so I knew I'd be facing something of a Heartbreak Hill on the road between Sheridan and Main, but that's easier when you're walking. I just stopped for some smelling of metaphorical roses along the way, including passing one tree that was left from an art installation I'd seen there just about a year ago. I'd always thought it was about a two-mile distance, but my phone suggested something closer to three (though that may have included running round the house looking for the cat and definitely included the going up and down stairs):
Eleanor then reported on the Missing Feline Person:
Her: Little Miss Pisspot is in the basket in her room. Eyeroll here.
Me: Of course she is. Bet she ate the treats, too.
Her: She sure did! ::cat emoji::
The good news is, other than hiding when we bring the eyedrops out, she's been much more ambulatory and active and while we'll finish the current dosing, it's good to know we're not going to have to drop (heh) another 90 bucks on a third bottle of the nasty stuff. We've moved the auxiliary catbox out of there, she's doing better with the male galoots, and is of course perfectly comfortable sleeping all night next to the dog.
And we don't have to pick a Medicare plan for her:P
We continue to count down to July 1, when Eleanor officially becomes a Medicare member. She's been planning this for a long time, and the planning involves extensive research she began doing way back last fall. I summarized a lot of the minefield (or rabbitfield, since it was the first of the month) that prospective Medicarers have to go through to get full coverage. For the only "free" part of the deal ("free" meaning "what you paid in to the system for since the 1970s" in our cases) is hospitalization. Basic routine coverage beyond that requires a premium that will begin to be deducted from her Social Security starting in July, for her of around $145 a month. But those are just the minimum things; co-pays and uncovered services and, oh yeah, MEDICATIONS all require that you either sign up for additional Parts or Plans. Meds are relatively straightforward and she's picked a "Part D" plan that will come out of our health savings account and cover just about all of what she's on now. Then, though, you have to
If you click the link above (the text one, not the Minions), you'll see all the options and choices and bullshit she had to go through. Complicating things is,... no, ARE many things. For one, Medicare planners chose to label their Gap plans by letter, which is how the basic components of coverage are also labeled: A for hospitalization, B for basic health care and D for drugs. Gap plans are labeled A through N, not all are available in all states, and many have condition restrictions if you don't sign up for them either at the very beginning or during annual open enrollment.
But what about Medicare Part C?. I hear you wonder. THAT's what goes by "Medicare Advantage," a deal with the devil when the devil was Bill Clinton that let HMOs get into the lucrative Old People Business by "simplifying" all these choices. The Blues and (in our area) Redshirts put a ton of advertising into these options, year round but especially during open enrollment each fall. In exchange for them sweet gummint dollars, they provide everything you've come to expect from those same insurance companies: paperwork, claim denials, networks and wherever they can, exclusions for pre-existing conditions. New York is better at limiting the latter than some states, but Eleanor had no interest in this alternative, and 90 percent of the junk mail we've gotten since she "signed up" for Medicare without picking specific plans consists of pitches for one Advantage option or another.
I'll let HER tell the story of how she saved us over $400 on a non-Advantage gap plan yesterday:
I reduced my annual health costs by $445 today!
That may not seem like much (it does to me), but I'm retiring at the end of next month, and I'm looking at any way to save on recurring, unavoidable expenses.
I did all kinds of research on Medicare, starting last fall. I attended, virtually, a seminar about it, how it works, which went into great detail. I have a spreadsheet, and I literally took screenshots from the seminar and pasted them into the spreadsheet. It was no surprise to me that the person conducting the seminar talked very quickly, so much so that I believe she'd make a damn good auctioneer. For cattle. Her goal was to sign people up for a service her organization provides. For seven hundred dollars, they will gather and analyze all your statistics, then tell you which plans would work for you.
I did my own analysis, kept the seven hundred dollars, and prepared.
Last week I signed up for a supplemental plan. It wasn't the one I expected to sign up for, it was another one, but it's fine. I had misinterpreted some of the jargon used in this industry, but by the end of the phone call, I understood that better, and I felt comfortable with my choice.
Except that, seven days later, I still had no email confirmation of what I'd bought. No membership card via snail mail. I went online to find out the status of my application. I jumped through hoop after hoop, no deal. The breaking point was when their system told me my email address was already being used with another account, therefore I needed to give them a new email. O.O I'm reminded of a cereal ad on TV from my youth:
"Silly rabbit"
There is no way anyone else has MY email address and is somehow in the organization's system. That fallacy was repeated, over and over. I finally used their chat service, to try to get this straightened out. The individual who responded was clearly working off a list of appropriate responses to customers' issues. I gave up and called. I encountered ONE decent customer service person, so lovely that I wrote down her name, and intend to write to the organization to praise her. Everyone else seemed woefully inadequate to the task, or their equipment was faulty or overloaded.
I hung up, resigned to giving it some more time.
Then I started rummaging through our junk mail. We have a paper bag which we'd used as a repository for all the junk mail pertaining to Medicare. Thinking I'd arrived at my decision, I started looking at it.
Its composition: mostly stuff pertaining to Advantage plans, some about drug plans, a few promoting seminars of the sort I'd already attended, and one batch of documents from AARP, pertaining to Supplemental plans, which is what I just bought.
Examining it, I realized the price, for the same plan I'd already bought, was $39.10 less a month. I stewed, I reasoned with myself, then I started going back and looking at what documentation I had from the supplier I'd signed up with. Except that the amount of documentation I had was problematic. Eight days after signing up, I had no membership card, nor had I anything in writing, electronic or snail mail, detailing what I bought. Therefore, if there was any clause saying I couldn't cancel, I had no proof of it.
I went online again, and searched for Supplement Medicare Plans for New York State. Google gave me an answer of GoMedigap, among other things. I clicked on it. Entered my name, birthdate, and zip code. They provided a list of plans available to me; I selected the one I want, and the broker-type organization gave me one choice of carrier: the one I'd already signed with. I did not give up. I called them, got a sales agent, who started in with the niceties, the standard, "What can I help you find today?"
I told him I would cut to the chase, and briefly described what I'd done and learned in the previous week and minutes, ending with the fact that I knew I could get what I'd already bought, for less, and I said from whom. He said, yes, and I can sign you up for that.
He then did, and instructed me to cancel the other application. Along the way, he was pleasant and attentive. Listened when I told him that the support people at company H were poorly trained or inadequately supplied with technology to do their jobs, with one exception.
Ultimately, I asked him why on his company website, the only carrier promoted was company H, when clearly company UA was an option too. His response was diplomatic, but I really didn't think it would matter.
Then I cancelled the original purchase. The company H phone system didn't allow for cancellations, so it shunted me to a salesperson. He said he'd transfer me to someone who could help me, but first, could he ask why, and I told him. He then said, but you signed electronically, right? I brushed this aside, saying, but that's moot at this point. So yeah, he was prepared with arguments that weren't true arguments, that held no water, yet I'm sure many people would be intimidated into accepting them, and acquiescing to their bullshit. Words can only poorly express the contempt I feel for that kind of tactic.
----
So there's 400 saved. We then proceeded to save another couple hundred on my stupid car.
I finally made an appointment to get my snow tires off. This is the yang to the yin that also occurred late last year, for while Eleanor was researching gaps and how to fill them, I was working on tires and how to get them to not kill me. Long story short (and the long story's in that non-Minion link), our longtime repair guy's right-hand man got a little left-handed and put the wrong size tires on the car and then moved the rims to the wrong wheels when he put the right sized ones on. This popped an idiot light that only the Evil Dealer could clear and who wound up charging several hundred bucks to undo the placement. So we made clear, when the tires came up for re-swapping, that we expected some accommodation for the mishap. And we got it: only $40 total to remove the snows (which barely had 3,000 miles on them from this winter even this late) and balance and mount the summer ones.
But the savings weren't finished. Eleanor also asked them to check a recommended repair that Evil Dealer had also spotted back in December- a replacement of some front end bars that were causing the little car to bounce like a bad check whenever he hit any kind of resistance in the road. Their price was over $400; our guys did it for just over half that. Loyalty pays: some Karens would have been angrier or demanded more than we asked for, but we would be looking for a mechanic as reliable, as honest and as fair as the one who wasn't perfect once.
----
And then there's the cat, who's not Evil but definitely gots herself some 'tude.
We dropped JARVIS off after I got home from Rochester on Wednesday, so we had just Eleanor's car for the day yesterday. I drove in first thing, but realized we forgot to give Zoey her morning eye meds, so I came home around 11.
Little shit was nowhere to be seen. We checked all her usual hidey-holes in the room she's been turtling in, in closets, under chairs and in some of her favorite places in the cellar where Eleanor hadn't seen her while working down there. We finally resolved to let it go for now; we left a few treats in her "room" and shut the door so the little delinquents wouldn't get them, and I then decided to do something I'd never done in the six years since moving to my current office location:
I walked to work.
It was a gorgeous coolish day, I had no clients to see or commitments to get to, so why not? I'd taken my bike there a few times over the years, so I knew I'd be facing something of a Heartbreak Hill on the road between Sheridan and Main, but that's easier when you're walking. I just stopped for some smelling of metaphorical roses along the way, including passing one tree that was left from an art installation I'd seen there just about a year ago. I'd always thought it was about a two-mile distance, but my phone suggested something closer to three (though that may have included running round the house looking for the cat and definitely included the going up and down stairs):
Eleanor then reported on the Missing Feline Person:
Her: Little Miss Pisspot is in the basket in her room. Eyeroll here.
Me: Of course she is. Bet she ate the treats, too.
Her: She sure did! ::cat emoji::
The good news is, other than hiding when we bring the eyedrops out, she's been much more ambulatory and active and while we'll finish the current dosing, it's good to know we're not going to have to drop (heh) another 90 bucks on a third bottle of the nasty stuff. We've moved the auxiliary catbox out of there, she's doing better with the male galoots, and is of course perfectly comfortable sleeping all night next to the dog.
And we don't have to pick a Medicare plan for her:P