On April 1 I celebrated Easter, traded April Fools’ Day jokes with the grandkids, and acknowledged the festival of Passover. Although I didn’t think of it that day, it was also my one-year anniversary of going onto Medicare. Is that a Medicaversary???

In general Medicare has been okay. I think that I made the right choice going with Basic Medicare and a Supplemental plan rather than a Cost plan (Minnesota’s hybrid version of an Advantage plan). At the same time I have the nagging feeling that I should have put more thought into the possibility of remaining a dependent on my husband’s insurance.

Almost everything that I have needed medically in the last year has been covered by Medicare but it has been a lot more work than my previous interactions with private insurance. Initially a few of my providers and suppliers made mistakes filing claims with Medicare. My Welcome to Medicare visit and a few routine screening tests were denied because a front desk clerk scanned my Medicare card but did not enter Medicare as my primary insurance. Then they entered the wrong date for my Medicare start date. I received lots of denial of service notifications but never a bill and it took a bunch of phone calls to get everything worked out. It was a PITA but not stressful because I knew that Medicare was supposed to pay for everything. There is a reason that Medicare is primarily for retired people because sometimes you need lots of time to navigate the system.

I have had two other issues with Medicare. The first has been discussed extensively on my blog and is the Medicare ban on smartphone/pump use with my Dexcom G5 system. I truly believe that this will eventually be remedied and I have heard from a reliable source that it might be in late 2018. But I’ll believe it when I see it. The second is that starting in 2018 my pump supplier (CCS Medical) has refused to provide the number of infusion sets that I require and my doctor prescribes. Chart notes and letters of medical necessity have been submitted twice. CCS has continued to deny the supplies claiming a change in Medicare rules and has been particularly unhelpful in resolving the problem. Because I know others who have been receiving their prescribed supplies without problems in 2018, I have determined that CCS Medical is the problem and am switching to another supplier.

These days a lot of my diabetes support and information comes from Facebook and direct communication with personal and online D-friends. We each have our own journey through Medicare just as we do with diabetes. Some are satisfied. Others are sad, many are frustrated, and a few are down right mad. Those emotions can change daily.

There are definite pluses and minuses with Facebook. The pluses are that people are very generous with information and it spreads like wildfire. I get the latest diabetes news and learn a lot from other people’s experiences. I belong to about 20 groups but am most active in the Seniors with Sensors, Dexcom G5 Users, and Tandem tSlim Pump groups. There is not a lot of Type 1 diabetes-specific Medicare information on the web and other seniors on Facebook are my best roadmap to navigating Medicare. 

Some of my quandary with Facebook and Medicare is coming to terms with how much I want to live in fight-mode versus how much I should be realistic and accept what is covered by Medicare. Many things that frustrate me about Medicare probably don’t impact my health or life significantly. I think it is stupid that I am required to see my endocrinologist every 90 days in order to get pump supplies. But it’s not a big deal. Although I hate carrying a Dexcom receiver and miss seeing my BG numbers on my Apple Watch, I do not require the accessibility functions of a smartphone or a follower of my CGM numbers. But other seniors do and I might tomorrow or next week. By no means I have been silent on the smartphone issue but at the moment I am willing to let the process work out with Dexcom negotiating with Medicare. I feel somewhat guilty living in the advocacy shadows and am appreciative of others who are more actively fighting. 

But advocacy can easily morph into complaining and anger. I don’t want to spend my senior years whining and feeling deprived because I don’t have the newest and greatest diabetes tech. At the same time I don’t want to live in the dark ages and miss out on new medications and D-tech that can ease the burden of diabetes in my life. 

Today I am one year into Medicare and basking in the mostly “okay-ness” of it. The rest of the story is still to be written and we’ll see how the next year goes.