Tag: insurance

Day 353, Anthem, Exercise, Fopal, Lecture

Wednesday, 11/20/2019

I wrote a few days back that the in-house exercise class–actually called “Strength and Balance” class–happened at the wrong time of the day. It’s at 9:15am MWF. In order to participate, I have to change my other regular habits. I decided to try it out today. It wouldn’t be practical to go for a run and be back for exercise at 9:15. Would it? So no run. But what about breakfast? I don’t want to go down to the dining room in my exercise shorts and t-shirt. So eat in my room. But then I’m all fed and coffee’d and newspaper’d by 7:30, with 2 hours to kill. It just upsets everything. Well.

Today I passed the time after breakfast and before exercise, trying to register with my new drug insurance provider, Anthem. I’d tried a few days ago and failed. I would enter my Anthem account number, first and last name, birthdate. It would recognize me, to the extent that it wanted to do 2FA by sending a text to my phone “***-***-1986” as it coyly said. Fine, do it. Then it would put up a cute error message, “Hmmm, that didn’t work for some reason. Try again later, or call support at…”

Today I tried it some more with the same result. So I called support. The person there, who had a very thick Latino accent, was able to find my information, and said well, it is having a problem with 2FA, I’ll turn off 2FA for this account and you can try again. Which I did, and was able to get to the point of providing a username and a password. Then it told me to go ahead and log in with this new id.

When I tried to do so, it put up an overlay message “Getting your information”; then wiped that and displayed a familiar cutesy message, “Hmmm, that didn’t work for some reason…”

So I called support again. This person was able to “find my information,” but she had the sense to ask, When does your coverage begin? Um, January first? Oh, well, you can’t use the website until you are within 30 days of your coverage starting.

Oh. Do you suppose the website might fucking SAY THAT instead of “for some reason”? No, I didn’t swear at the lady. Anyway, it was now 9:15.

Exercise class was impressive. There’s at least 40 people there. Most in street clothes; I think I was the only one in shorts, other than Clark, the staff fitness person who leads it. He does a good job. He leads through a rapid sequence of a variety of exercises, some I found quite challenging. Not because they demanded a lot of strength, but because they involved coordination. OK, sit forward and upright on a chair. Lift your right knee, swing the leg out to 45 degrees; bring it back, repeat on the left side. Keep doing this, left, right, steadily, but now put both arms out straight and make circles. And so on. There were some strength exercises using thera-bands, and various other things, 45 minutes worth, which got me breathing and lightly perspiring.

I had a shower (quite a few people in the class were exercising as hard as I was, in street clothes, and I wondered about that) and then drove up the hardware store to get batteries so I can set up a new indoor/outdoor thermometer I’ve bought. I had a smoothie for lunch at Whole Foods. Then I went to FOPAL; yes, I was just there yesterday, but that was really Monday’s session delayed to Tuesday, and this was my regular Wednesday sorting session. And it’s quite a bit more actual bending and lifting exercise than the class was.

In the evening I attended a lecture here, a local artist presenting on “Who Shot Vincent?” He reviewed the brief,  tragic career of Van Gogh, showed lots of his pictures and discussed the development of his technique over the single decade of his painting career, and at the end presented the evidence that Vincent probably did not commit suicide but was shot accidentally by some teenagers goofing off.

 

Day 345, paperwork, novel, supper

Tuesday, 11/12/2019

Went for a run. Then took care of some admin. First, scheduled a payment to the BofA credit card. It will go through tomorrow, so from Thursday on it will have a zero balance and I will close it out.

About two weeks ago–I don’t see any mention of it here–I went to the MyMedicare site and did plan comparisons on my health plans. I found that the Anthem/Blue Cross prescription drug plan appeared to be a significantly better deal than the Humana one I’d been using since 2007, so I opted for that. Soon after I got a letter from Medicare saying my application should be processed in ten days, and if I hadn’t heard, to contact the provider. It has been more than ten days, so I did.

Annoyances: I tried to use the Chat facility on the Anthem site. It kept showing me that some person had connected, enter a message, then that they had disconnected, then went back to showing me “a representative will be with you shortly.” Tried two browsers. So called the number shown. Very short menu: 1 to buy a new plan, 2 for an existing plan, 3 for a provider. OK, 2. Thank you, as a member, please call the customer service number on the back of your membership card, goodbye. But… but… OK, try again, this time select 1. Lady takes my name, address, date of birth; says, well you have called the medicare purchase line, but I see you in our system (oh good) let me transfer you to the medicare service line. Which works but of course, that lady also has to take my name, address, date of birth because heaven forfend the info should transfer along with me.

Anyway, yes, my application is in the system, a membership card was mailed to me on 11/5, and a welcome packet should arrive separately but soon. So all good.

After lunch I added 1300 words to the novel.

At 4:30 it was time to attend the 4th floor meeting. Each floor has regular meetings to cover whatever domestic items come up. There’s an elected floor rep who chairs the meeting. (I first attended a 6th floor meeting back on day 156, after I’d signed the contract but before I moved in.) Fourth floor meeting was to be followed by 4th floor eating dinner together, they’d reserved a large table. But Craig, the 6th floor rep had also reserved a table for a 6th-floor-in-exile get-together dinner, so I ate with them.