Dr. Walsh said that James' CT scan looked good so is moving forward with immunotherapy. He's scheduling 4 more treatments then another CT. Woohoo!
VA has paid for the recent appointments including immunotherapy yesterday. We're in the process of transferring scripts to VA too. It ends up that our Tufts insurance was purchased through the MA Health Connector "marketplace" which is federal and VA is also federal and you can't access both so James was dropped from our connectorcare "marketplace" policy. If I earned less money, if we qualified for fully funded Mass Health we could have used both Mass Health and VA. Would have been nice if they had sent a letter to let us know. Maybe a phone call. Maybe if someone had a clue with the 20 phone calls, 60 hours, day spent at the Health Connector office. Ugh. The VA is strongly encouraging me to have some kind of back up healthcare for James. As I can't access a paid policy as a self employed person for us as a family I'm looking into early "retirement" from UMass (worked there 1986-2000 and am vested in the state system) to pick up state retiree healthcare and collect the small state pension most of which would go to paying for the state healthcare which looks fairly expensive. Water under the bridge I suppose and worth it if the treatment is working.
Back to the happy news. James is well. 4th immunotherapy was yesterday. CT looked good (need to read results to see what "good" means). Onward and upward :^)
Friday, December 14, 2018
Tuesday, December 11, 2018
Ongoing health ins saga...
I was told at the end of the MA Health Connector call Friday to check 24-48 hours with the case # supplied to see that James health ins was reinstated. I called Monday and was told the case # did nothing for them as there are many different call centers, that they had no record of the Friday conversation, that they did not know why ins had been cancelled and wanted to try to reset the application which is exactly what the Friday person told me they were doing. I was on the phone with this new person for close to an hour before I finally disconnected saying I had no faith that if I went through the entire process again that anything would be different. When asked this call center person would not give me her name (I'd missed it when she said at the beginning of the call) and also would not transfer me to a supervisor. I feel badly in a way for these call center people as they're probably making minimum wage and dealing with stressed irate people but really? What the heck.
I made the decision to disconnect from call center to go to a local office and speak to someone in person. I needed to look someone in the eye and put a name to a face.
Yesterday afternoon I went to the local MA Health Connector office. I put an hours worth of coin in the meter. I waited 1-1/2 hours to be seen then spent close to 2 hours with a young guy named Angel who looked into every aspect of our situation. He called two supervisors one of whom was off. No one knows why James' insurance was cancelled. Angel is going to continue working on my case and is going to call me with an update today. I've told Angel that James has a terminal cancer diagnosis, we're unable to fill his prescriptions in a timely fashion because they now have to go through the "safety net" for prior authorization, I've told Angel the only current treatment hope is the immunotherapy which appears to be working and the next infusion is Thursday this week. I have not told Angel that the VA is inline to cover the oncology costs as the VA has been stressing to me that they are not an insurance and they should not be the reason that the insurance was cancelled. Will update once I hear back from Angel. What a nightmare.
Surprisingly I did not have a ticket at hugely expired meter.
I made the decision to disconnect from call center to go to a local office and speak to someone in person. I needed to look someone in the eye and put a name to a face.
Yesterday afternoon I went to the local MA Health Connector office. I put an hours worth of coin in the meter. I waited 1-1/2 hours to be seen then spent close to 2 hours with a young guy named Angel who looked into every aspect of our situation. He called two supervisors one of whom was off. No one knows why James' insurance was cancelled. Angel is going to continue working on my case and is going to call me with an update today. I've told Angel that James has a terminal cancer diagnosis, we're unable to fill his prescriptions in a timely fashion because they now have to go through the "safety net" for prior authorization, I've told Angel the only current treatment hope is the immunotherapy which appears to be working and the next infusion is Thursday this week. I have not told Angel that the VA is inline to cover the oncology costs as the VA has been stressing to me that they are not an insurance and they should not be the reason that the insurance was cancelled. Will update once I hear back from Angel. What a nightmare.
Surprisingly I did not have a ticket at hugely expired meter.
Monday, December 10, 2018
Excuse the melt down....
Friday, December 7, 2018
VA and health and health insurance yikes
James is really doing great. He has good energy, appetite is up, sleeping a tiny bit better maybe. In my eyes the immunotherapy is working but we have to wait to see what they say. Next infusion is this week on Thursday.
The VA has been a true blessing. While there is not any financial assistance (yet, still a possibility) they will continue to drop off that mixed food box of things for us to test. We've seen a primary care person who contacted her nutritionist and they has signed us up for deliveries of high protein chocolate Ensure, 3x day for a month was the first delivery. That's a lot of Ensure! While the high protein isn't his fave to drink straight up I've been using it in the choc frappes (1/2 banana, scoop of weight gain protein powder, vanilla icecream, Ensure, little extra choc syrup) and tonight I made homemade chocolate pudding using Ensure instead of milk. It was the old Betty Crocker recipe which has egg yolks so extra extra protein. Very rich and delicious. We all had a bowl hot off the stove top with a scoop of vanilla icecream. Mmmmm.....
Little health insurance trauma yesterday. I was calling in a couple prescriptions and was told by one pharmacy that James insurance was cancelled so they could not fill the script. I went to pick up a prescription at the other pharmacy and they also didn't fill (didn't call me either) because the insurance was no longer active. I called the insurance co freaking out. They said it was cancelled through the MA Health Connector and I had to talk to them. My ins was still active and we're on a family plan. James is in the middle of cancer treatment. He'd just had a CT scan. He's scheduled for immunotherapy infusion this coming week. We have 4 prescriptions that we need to fill. My brain exploded and I was flipping between swearing and crying on the phone. The MA Health Connector could not explain to me why his insurance was "terminated". I started worrying it was because we'd gone to the VA clinic. Our insurance is subsidized, would they terminate if they realized that he's a veteran and can get medical care through the VA? I called the VA clinic, our VA rep, and a VA social worker. They all assured me that the insurance should not cancel but also said they would cover his Oncology care, anything he needs through UMass for 6 months. The VA medical team, social workers, and our VA rep are all angels. I called MA Health Connector again today and the insurance drop may have been a blip. A mistake. An oops. They're working to reinstate it. Do they realize our current state of stress and anxiety? Oops sorry. Really? Thank goodness for the VA. They have our backs.
The VA has been a true blessing. While there is not any financial assistance (yet, still a possibility) they will continue to drop off that mixed food box of things for us to test. We've seen a primary care person who contacted her nutritionist and they has signed us up for deliveries of high protein chocolate Ensure, 3x day for a month was the first delivery. That's a lot of Ensure! While the high protein isn't his fave to drink straight up I've been using it in the choc frappes (1/2 banana, scoop of weight gain protein powder, vanilla icecream, Ensure, little extra choc syrup) and tonight I made homemade chocolate pudding using Ensure instead of milk. It was the old Betty Crocker recipe which has egg yolks so extra extra protein. Very rich and delicious. We all had a bowl hot off the stove top with a scoop of vanilla icecream. Mmmmm.....
Little health insurance trauma yesterday. I was calling in a couple prescriptions and was told by one pharmacy that James insurance was cancelled so they could not fill the script. I went to pick up a prescription at the other pharmacy and they also didn't fill (didn't call me either) because the insurance was no longer active. I called the insurance co freaking out. They said it was cancelled through the MA Health Connector and I had to talk to them. My ins was still active and we're on a family plan. James is in the middle of cancer treatment. He'd just had a CT scan. He's scheduled for immunotherapy infusion this coming week. We have 4 prescriptions that we need to fill. My brain exploded and I was flipping between swearing and crying on the phone. The MA Health Connector could not explain to me why his insurance was "terminated". I started worrying it was because we'd gone to the VA clinic. Our insurance is subsidized, would they terminate if they realized that he's a veteran and can get medical care through the VA? I called the VA clinic, our VA rep, and a VA social worker. They all assured me that the insurance should not cancel but also said they would cover his Oncology care, anything he needs through UMass for 6 months. The VA medical team, social workers, and our VA rep are all angels. I called MA Health Connector again today and the insurance drop may have been a blip. A mistake. An oops. They're working to reinstate it. Do they realize our current state of stress and anxiety? Oops sorry. Really? Thank goodness for the VA. They have our backs.
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