One would think that getting a yearly reimbursement for $800 is something that one would remember.
One would think, would one not?
Except somehow it slipped my mind this year.
Thankfully, I received a reminder email from my health insurance this morning, so I set about rectifying the oversight.
Being a retired federal employee, I have access to some pretty good healthcare benefits, the same benefits that all federal employees receive, including all members of Congress.
As a reminder, those are the healthcare benefits that Republicans don’t want the rest of our citizens to have for some reason.
But I digress.
Anyway, one of my benefits is a yearly $800 reimbursement for my Medicare premiums. I usually submit the claim for the previous year in January, but for some reason I forgot this year. Happily, I have until the end of this month to submit that claim.
Unhappily, it meant I had to navigate through my health insurance company’s website, which is always a pain.
I ended up calling their customer service and I discovered my mistake. I had actually logged on to their website, whereas I should simply have scrolled to the bottom of their home page without logging on. Who knew?
In the end, it required going to yet another web site, and creating yet another ID and password, as if I don’t have enough of those already.
But I managed to submit my claim, once I figured out how to navigate the new website and figure out how to download the proof of my Medicare payment from the Social Security site which was yet another saga in itself. My recollection is that they process these claims pretty quickly, so I should have plenty of time to correct any mistakes I may have made in my submission before the end of the year.
I ended up creating a yearly reminder for January, so I presumably won’t forget about this benefit again, and I left myself some instructions, so I’ll remember where to go to get what I need.
As long as they don’t change things around again in the ensuing years.
Which, if history is any guide, they probably will.