Medicare asked my mother's doctor if she would truly benefit from her CPAP before they would pay to replace the one that is ten years old. It was no longer whether she needed the help to keep breathing at night, but whether she would actually benefit.
So now, I've been told that one of the ones who is on disability for carpal tunnel syndrome is having a gastric bypass that Medicare is paying for, even though it's basically an elective procedure and has nothing to do with her "disability" at all. I'm having to fight to get my elderly mother's care and this fifty-something is having surgery to lose weight at the taxpayer's expense.
Does that sound messed up or what? She's one of four in the family who are "disabled" and are on Medicare long before they would normally have been, who do whatever they want to do without their condition limiting them, whose condition only seems to bother them when they're afraid someone is watching them. I can think of at least two of the four who went from unemployment to disability. One drinks herself into a SSDI-funded stupor most every night.
No wonder Social Security is in the shape it's in.
I put their offer into File 13 where it belongs.
And you know what my response to Medicare was? Yes, she benefits. She doesn't stop breathing during her sleep and her blood pressure isn't spiking along with her heart rate, so she's less likely to have a heart attack or stroke.
Idiots --- every single one. And yes, I'm including those in my extended family who decided that disability was their ticket to an early retirement.
I talked to Medicare and supposedly there is a two, five or seven year reevaluation of their need for disability. The only way to speed it up is to call the fraud line, so.....