The Emporia Gazette

May 27, 2012

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Back in January, I wrote one of these columns about how fantastically bureaucratic our health system is. That column brought so many comments that I wrote another on the subject in February. I am now going to do another on that same subject, if I have my way.

As I said, the first of those columns on the bureaucracy in our health care brought several responses. Enough so that I wrote the second column of the subject. That one, too, brought some responses. Permit me, then, to start by mentioning them.

Those many responses mostly came from older folks. That, of course, is because they are the ones who deal with Medicare. But there were also comments from people who are only in the middle of life. Everyone seems to agree that our health system is a mess. Why does it have to be that way, most of us ask?

Coralea Cranz told me about one of her experiences. She was on an ambulance to Kansas City to get some medical attention. She was billed for it. Later, she got another bill for the same trip. She asked about it. The only answer she got was that she had to pay both because she used the wrong doctor in the wrong place. She never understood what that was all about. A person in the post office, shortly after that last column, said to me, “If I had my way, we would certainly do something about our health care system.” And there were many other comments of that type given to me.

Those comments on that earlier column, as I said above, had been a stimulus for my writing another column on the bureaucratic health care system. I had thought that I would get to it one day, but an experience of my own became the real stimulus for me to take pen in hand.

Permit me, then, to tell you about my most recent experience with our system. You would permit me to do that, if I had my way.

For those of us on Medicare, something called Medicare Summary Notice comes periodically and routinely. It says on it that it is a quarterly report, but it seems to be more variable than that. Well! One arrived on Aug. 13. It was dated 8-10-07 and it summarized our uses from April 2, 2007, through July 30, 2007.

I had cataract surgery on May 2, 2007. This summary included a Dr. Reynolds-anesthesia on 5-2-07 for a cost of $710.00. Further down, it included a Dr. Reynolds-cataract surgery on 5-2-07 for a cost of $1,850.00. So be it, I thought.

Then, on Aug. 24, 2007, THREE big, gray envelopes arrived from Wheatland Administrative Services in Topeka. Each of the three contained exactly the same thing. That was a Medicare Summary Notice page and three other pages full of information, some of them on both sides. These were dated July 1, 2007.

On the Summary page was a list of eight things referred by Dr. Reynolds for cataract surgery dated 5-2-07. The total cost was $3,555.04. There was a phone number to call for information listed at the top of the page and it said to ask for “Hospital Services.”

I called. I wanted to know why I got three of those exactly the same reports. And I wanted to know why these differed from the earlier report.

I called six times over three days. I got nothing but a recorded voice which listed about a dozen options for me to talk with. Hospital Services was never one of them. I asked for it and the voice told me it would be 15 minutes before I could talk to anyone. A couple of times, it said it would be 60 minutes. I got the same answer on every call.

So, I wrote a letter asking about why I got three big, gray envelopes which were exactly the same. A couple of months later, I received a reply. It simply said that they had had a “system problem.”

Another big, gray envelope arrived on Sept. 4. It had exactly the same Summary page and the three informational pages in it. It was also dated 7-01-07, as had been the earlier three. So! Now I have four of exactly the same thing. Why? I am keeping one for my records, but discarding the other three.

There, then, I have given you an idea of how our bureaucratic health system works. I do hope that some of you understand it better than I do. I do not understand it at all. Somebody certainly would do something about making it more understandable, if I had my way. And streamline it so that I did not get four of exactly the same non-understandable reports.