#Fuck Lincare
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If you get diagnosed with sleep apnea, don't go ANYWHERE near Lincare if you have a choice. Ask your doctor who they are placing the order with and beg them not to use Lincare. If it's your only choice, DO NOT SET UP AUTOSHIP WITH THEM.
Just got a $1200 bill along with a giant box of cpap supplies even though I told them I no longer had insurance and wanted to cancel, and THEY CALLED ME for a final confirmation of cancellation. But apparently they still tried to bill my insurance to milk it of more money despite me no longer being covered.
#wrenfea.exe#cpap#sleep apnea#theres no way in hell im paying it#ill contest the charge with my bank if i have to#im gonna get all my future supplies from cpap.com#fuck lincare
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Personal: Lincare is Still Lying to Me in Instead of Replacing My Nebulizer
Wednesday night I managed to squeeze a third of a dose out of the machine before it died for good. I've called four times for a new machine, plus my doctor twice begging them to pressure the company, and I've been nearly four weeks without the minimum of two full doses, since the best the machine could manage was two half doses a day and falling.
I've been slowly deteriorating, but the difference between some meds and no meds until the only company in town that provides these things to Medicare feels like sending a new one is massive. I'm not doing so hot. my guess is that like last time the plan is to wait until I'm noticeably hypoxic before sending one.
Lies from the company so far: 2 instances of "Well send it to you one the next truck. (One from employee one from supervisor when I stayed up Thursday to beg for my machine). 1 instance of we'll call you in 1-2 business days to explain to you how to fix the motor. (Second phone call. They have never called me back ever in the decade or so I've been dealing with them except for delivery guys at the door wanting me to come get my equipment. Also this is madness. There are signs on the thing that make it clear I'm not supposed to open the panel and poke around. Also, how are they expecting a random disabled person with arthritis fingers to open and service a machine they literally throw out and replace when they break? Why can't they just fucking send a new one like they are supposed to.) 3 Lies that they will send a unit. 1 lie that they will send a note to the warehouse to make sure they will send it right away. (Third call) 1 lie either that they sent a note to the supervisor (3rd call) or that no one informed the supervisor that this situation was occurring (4th call, when they actually physically went and got a supervisor. I am inclined to assume the supervisor was lying, but I've no actually proof and one of them has to be lying by definition).
Every time I call I have to start from scratch because they never have any record that I called and never remember me even though from the voices they only have two people answering the phone. (The lady from call two and three has a very distinctive voice. Theoretically call one an four could be two very similar voices with local accents and identical extremely distinct phone personas, but I think not. These are also the two voices I remember from the two week saga where they'd lost my paper work and they were too lazy to look for it properly or get replacements from Medicare and they waited two weeks until I was dangerously hypoxic and panicked medical staff calls from poverty clinic to chew them out.)
There online reviews are terrible, by the way, full of people scared because their oxygen or and elderly relatives hasn't shown up and it's been a couple weeks.
Medicare pays them regardless of whether they provide essential equipment to lung patients so there is zero urgency to replace dead equipment since they can still charge the government equipment retail on dead equipment as if it works. I mean who would actually force them to?
Bonus? They insist on calling me a couple of times a week because I haven't ordered new ampules because the equipment is broken. Ampule peddlers have zero means of alerting the equipment people that there is a fucking issue even though they are literally in the same physical building and apparently they also can't mark my record so they stop calling me until they send me a new machine because of course. Every time they wake me up to hassle me and get crankier, but they have no profit motive to stop, so...
Sigh.
I am waiting for poverty clinic to open so I can leave them a message again and see if I can get them to strong arm the equipment company.
I have shit to do. Air quality is better than last week, but it's still not great. I need my meds.
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Okay. Crisis averted.
I have never come so close to losing my shit on a Grownup Phone Call as I did earlier, but by God, I still managed to rein it in long enough to land this gently.
So most of you guys know I use portable oxygen tanks when I’m out and about. I get these things like six at a time; when I run out, I just call the supply company and they send out a technician with a fresh batch. It’s covered under Medicare, so I never pay a dime. Great.
Last week I called for refills and the girl I spoke to (whom we’ll call F) said they couldn’t send anyone out until I was seen by my physician1 (or, in this case, my pulmonary specialist) for a renewed evaluation and prescription. It was basically, “Make an appointment, call us back when you make one, and we’ll send them paperwork so they can get started.” This kind of thing is actually pretty routine...
...except the earliest appointment I could make is in about mid-May2. Not so great.
Still, I had one tank left on me3 and it’s not like I was planning to be out and about the town during April--I mostly use a continuous machine at home, and the house is small enough that I can manage without hooking up to the portable for most things--so I mean, I figured I could probably make it stretch.
And then somehow between the Highland Games on Saturday, Ghost in the Shell on Sunday, and walking Delta yesterday, I...used up all the oxygen in my last tank? Definitely not so great.
So I called the supply company, because I’d somehow forgotten to let them know I made the appointment anyway (because I’m not that great at Adulting), and spoke with S. I explained to her what F explained to me, and she put me on hold while pulling up my case. Then S gets back on the line.
“We’re unable to send a technician out with tanks because it says here that you own the (continuous oxygen) machine, and Medicare caps you after five years.”
*Hamilton voice* I’m sorry, what?
*Lucio voice* That’s not right.
You know that nervous laughter people sometimes have when they hear some shit that’s just so left field? I have never done that on a Grownup Phone Call before today. I was that rattled.
I explain to S (while trying to keep calm) that I’ve only had this current machine and receiving portable tanks through their supply company for three years. She brings up that the records say I’ve had a machine since 2010, which means service should have capped in 2015, even though I last got tanks in 2016. It’s my understanding that Medicare caps paying for stuff after five years, unless you’re reevaluated or some shit? I don’t know. The point is, something is fucked up somewhere, and I don’t know where--but I have to remind myself that this is not poor S’s fault. She is actually doing her best to help, I swear she was. She even offered to send some tanks, although I would have to pay out of pocket for them.
“How much are we talking?”
$189 and some change. For six tanks. I could practically feel her wincing as she said it. I literally checked my bank account to see if I could afford it. (I could have, but I mean...)
Then she brings up the name “Lincare” and mentally I lurch, because Lincare was a medical company I dealt with seven years ago concerning a much older, bigger, uglier oxygen machine. The last pulmonary specialist I saw before aging out of Tricare (aka, Military Health Insurance) prescribed it for me, and that was the last thing I thought I needed (because I was still in the thick of dealing with depression). I was able to get them to take it back, but I spent I can’t even remember how many months paying it off out of pocket because Medicare was like, “Well, it’s yours now, so...”
But it seems to me that somehow, somehow, somewhere in the paperwork they’re trying to say that the previous machine and this new machine are the same? Or part of the same like...replacement...situation? I don’t fucking know. All I’m sure of is that something somewhere is fucked, and I’m pretty sure S realized it too, because she puts me on hold to get her manager for help.
Then she takes me off hold and says, “Listen, I’m going to call you back. My manager is here and we’re going to look through your case to figure out what’s going on.”
I think it’s maybe twenty or thirty minutes before my phone goes of. It’s S. There is an exchange of pleasantries. Then--
“How many tanks do you need?”
"I, um, six?”
“And have you seen your physician in the last twelve months?”
“YES. I saw him in October!”
"What is his name?”
“Dr. Pulmonary Specialist over at the--”
“Oh, Dr. Specialist? Fantastic. I’m gonna go ahead and get in touch with him and see if we can get you started on this as soon as possible, and then I’ll have a technician bring you tanks on Thursday.”
I don’t have to pay a goddamn thing.
I get off the phone, feeling like any natural d20′s I might have rolled for the next several weeks’ worth of Pathfinder nights went towards achieving this result, and decide it’s totally worth it.
1. Actually, I have to call and schedule an appointment to get a NEW general physician because the one I’ve been seeing for years--who has been nothing short of AWESOME--is moving to Florida. Fuck.
2. I probably could have called my specialist directly, as he gave me his cell phone and assured me I could, to try and get an earlier appointment; but I feel weird about such things. I dunno. It would have been a perfectly valid excuse! And yet...
3. Thankfully, it seems I have an extra tank in the garage, left over from PAX South. In addition to always attending conventions on a full portable tank, I always take an extra just in case.
#Cris's Bizarre Medical Adventure#Cris is an Adult#medical things#universal healthcare WHEN?#I did not come back from near death for this shit guys come on
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