I say yes, you say no, OR People are Strange

When my daughters were infants, I put prints of paintings by Norval Morriseau in their bassinets ( I actually removed them from a book that I bought-desecration-but at the time it seemed more important than keeping the book intact.-I still have the book, with a few loose prints to remind me of my new mom exhausted/fried brain phase of life.)  I wanted them to see art, see brilliant colours.  I thought maybe they might have the "artist" part of their brains stimulated.  We carried on introducing them to diverse art because it gave us pleasure and it worked!  Both our our daughters are artists, both very different, but both also still attracted to bright colours! 

Your Italian Canadian heritage would almost guarantee that!  Lucky you.  

Enjoyful, I'm so happy that you are lucky enough to have the practically only doctors that take Medicare.

Lewing, I Googled the light display you mentioned and it was fantastic!  A really nice bit of holiday fluff.  

Sun -- Lucy and Ethel in the chocolate factory!

Don't forget the grape stomping episode and the lovely "We're having a baby"

Kay, I love your idea of thinking up fun, obsessive quests (especially the pho one, since I love pho . . . didn't grow up with it, but it's become one of my cold weather comfort foods).  My late ex-husband once set out on a quest to have a beer at every bar on Joseph Campau (a looooong street) in Detroit that crosses into the Polish enclave of Hamtramck.  He and his buddies were crawling by the end, and they STILL didn't make their goal.  But the fulfillment is in the trying.  Or something like that.

Enjoyful, please do keep us posted on your harrowing Medicare saga.  (And in all seriousness, you know we're all wishing you the best in your treatment.)

Linda

Love your posts, Enjoyful!  Good luck with the radiation! Sending good vibes your way.

And please continue to post about your "Medicare shenanigans"

Feeling patriotic and proud about the Affordable Care Act and am so touched by this story.  You may remember watching it a few months ago:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Tsu1EOnTXY

Eeee - your posts just bust me up.  You make Medicare sound so exciting (huh, really, just boring - as in boring is good).  Hope Rads go as good as they can.

Pho - so, I found the easiest way to make that stuff after going the route of  ooking for every exotic ingredient in a big city market.  Kombu?  Buy those organic Pacific Foods cartons of Pho - vegetable or chicken base (another big city item or can be purchased on on Amazon).  Add your favorite ingredients (vegetables, chicken, rice noodles) and one has instant Pho!  Ofcourse, if one actually lives in a place that sells Pho, maybe going out is easier.

Chickadee, that was so beautiful!  And amazing!

E, may I respectfully suggest you create an account on MYMEDICARE.GOV.  You can track all your claims there.

I just spent the last 1/2 hour figuring out why the medical folks are billing us for certain amounts.  DH and DS have secondary insurance with Medicare.  So I see what medicare paid for the visits by my DH and DS..........and then I check what Aetna kicked in as the secondary.  How interesting.  It seems the medical folks are posting one payment but not both and in fact my calculations indicate an overpayment because of it.  The facility agrees to Medicares schedule of payments and the secondary then picks up the leftover and applies its formulas.  So far that has resulted in zero owed from us.  So when they send me a bill I check.

Been doing it all year and getting tired of the sloppy input work.  Oh well, another email to customer service.  So far I'm winning.

This was me today. Hopefully tomorrow I'll have more energy!

I have a Medicare question (me me me, right here!).  I'm not a retiree yet, but soon to be.  I will be eligible for Medicare in about 7 years.  I also will continue to carry my employer provided health insurance as secondary (until I'm 65, I have my employer health insurance as primary).  I was talking to a retiree with same insurance, and he says he purchases a 3rd policy (for one of the Parts, so I assume from Medicare?), so he ends up paying nothing, ever.  What would that be?  My catastrophic (i.e. out-of-pocket) before my current Primary pays all is $5000.  Not sure how that works with Medicare.

Kam, take a look in your FEHB brochure for your plan -- they all have explanations about how FEHB works with Medicare.  You will not need Part D -- drugs are included in our plans.  I have BC/BS.  Part B is questionable -- lots of people take it and then it is my understanding that you end up not paying anything.  Maybe WR can fill us in on how it works?

L