Just a Little of That Human Touch?

I am lying on an emergency room gurney the morning of the day I am supposed to fly to Florida, my guts churned up and spilling out of me in a blood red rage.

It's been a stressful three weeks since my mother was diagnosed with cancer, most of it spent on the phone - arranging treatment, trying to figure out Medicare and Medicaid and figuring out where and how my mother will live once she begins chemotherapy.

Three weeks and now the house of cards is threatening to tumble down. We are caught in a Kafka-esque situation. A bureaucrat has yet to enter essential information into my mother's Medicare account that is required before the Cancer Care Alliance will honor her Feb. 8 appointment. I spend hours groveling on the phone with all the relevant parties, to no avail. I have a momentary feeling of hope when I speak to a Medicare supervisor named Charisma, but when I arrange a conference call between Medicare and the Cancer Care Alliance, I am at the mercy of a bland peon who cannot help me. Charisma cannot be reached.

So I try Aetna, my mother's new drug plan provider (if you are under 65, just for kicks, ask your parents to explain their Medicare Part D coverage. Want to really have fun? Ask them to explain the "doughnut hole.")
I find a helpful woman named Stephanie and I appeal to her sense of humanity. She rises to the challenge, enters emergency notes into various and sundry computer screens and takes the gutsy step of GIVING ME HER LAST NAME AND HER EMPLOYEE ID NUMBER and tells me to call back on Thursday and all should be rectified.

So once I manage to get my guts back into my body, I take the plane to Florida and wake up Thursday morning ready to hear the good news
from Aetna. Alas, no one can find records of my call. WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH STEPHANIE I want to scream, convinced she has
been vaporized for revealing too much. Finally, I am referred to The Center of Excellence (I am not making this up) where I am told that excellence entails initiating a status request to the Customer Advocacy Center, which, if I am lucky, will call me with an update, while I am on the plane to Seattle. Did you really think they would give me the phone number for the people who are supposed to be my advocates? There is no number, I was told ominously.

I've heard a lot of concerns that healthcare reform would go to the dogs if it's put in the hands of the government. But I have to believe that, as far as Medicare goes, the current public-private mix is the worst of all options, leaving the elderly at the mercy of one or more unnavigable bureaucracies. And when the people who work for those bureacracies are not empowered to deviate beyond "the systems" what we are left with is a cold, unresponsive, ineffective health care delivery system. Call me a socialist, but surely we can do better.

We'll get on the plane for Seattle tomorrow and when we land, I'll pick up the phone and keep fighting in the hopes that I don"t have to ask my cancer-ridden mother to wait a little longer for relief.