Current Events > Do people get left hanging on their Medicare approval status for nearly a year?

(+) Yeah! (+)

My uncle's been stuck under "processing" since June/July last year. SS office says they can't do a thing about it. They can't even pry out if he was rejected or missing something on his application.

I don't think I'd jump to trashing the handlers because I'm sure they're slammed in work, but I don't get how they expect anyone to wait on out on it this long, especially when they...need it. Someone's going to have to cover his dialysis treatments at some point out of pocket, and feeling out those costs, that's incredibly unsustainable for most people.

I've spent the last couple years helping my parents plan for retirement, and that hasn't really been our experience. My mom had it ready to go as soon as she turned 65 last year, but we applied for her three months ahead of time (as is recommended) just to be safe. My dad turns 65 in three months and has his all ready to go, but he retired early and has been taking social security payments since he was 62, so he's been in the system for a while.

Did your uncle apply early? My parents both applied for all this through the main social security website, and it was surprisingly serviceable (again, we did things well in advance to account for delays).

Yes, it can take a long time. Any sort of exception in a case makes it take even longer. If you missed any paperwork or have to resubmit something it takes even longer still

I work in a nursing home and we get people applying for beds all the time who have to wait for Medicare approval

if he has a case worker you should ask them about it, theyre usually the best at finding out whats going on

YoBlazer posted...

Did your uncle apply early? My parents both applied for all this through the main social security website, and it was surprisingly serviceable (again, we did things well in advance to account for delays).

Unfortunately I haven't dug too deep into how far he got. My understanding, though, is it wasn't necessarily planned too far in advance

Kidney failure kinda hanging on at his job with no intentions to quit for a few months then got let go, and at that point he decided to retire and only then looked at applying since his employer's coverage was due to end. 62 years old at that point.

thronedfire2 posted...

if he has a case worker you should ask them about it, theyre usually the best at finding out whats going on

So far it seems there's someone at the local SSA office he's in touch with, and then someone at the Dialysis center. I'm not sure how closely involved the Dialysis center rep is with Medicare.

He did try calling in and supposedly got a bit of a runaround, being told to apply for something else or re-apply. When he ran it by the SSA rep, he was told that would be a backwards thing to do and would theoretically put him at the back of the line.