One of the joys of aging in the US is that when you reach age 65, you are required to "enroll" in Medicare, which is the official government health insurance program... regardless of what your situation might have been, previously.
Having grown up with Universal Healthcare, it seems rather daft, given that the system already has all your personal medical information, and the only difference is that you are one year older.
I'm not entirely sure as to the structure and reasoning behind it all, but I believe it is related to whether your medical insurance is a government benefit or a retirement benefit... different agencies dispensing the same tax dollar.
Regardless...
This morning I set about the process of first going through a questionnaire to ascertain that I actually qualify for Medicare — which I do — and then on to the Social Security website (note: not the Medicare website) to complete a bunch of application form information that are already in the system... but whatever.
So, having spent a lot of time filling out information ranging from when I first became a resident of the US to my ex-wife's maiden name... I reached a page where I was told "Error: this process cannot be completed online."
Evidently because I'm foreign born and am only enrolling in the medical insurance part, but not claiming retirement benefits.
I don't want to claim retirement benefits because (A) I'll likely be working for another 5-10 years and (B) my retirement benefits will be much higher if I wait until the last possible date... at age 70. I can't afford to retire...
So the next "dread" was that I would have to call the Social Security Administration to finish the process (hopefully!) by phone with a live operator.
And so, I call up... and wait... and wait... and wait, all the while listening to hold music worthy of a cheap 1970s pr0n movie, interspersed with periodic messages that I would most likely be able to complete the process much faster by going to the Social Security website.
On about the 17th iteration of this — having spent 93 minutes on hold and periodically hearing the message "estimated wait time is... more than 120 minutes" — there was finally some clicking on the line... and the call was disconnected.
Epic Fail...
At this point I decided to see whether I could find the number for the Social Security office in our general area, which I knew existed because a friend of ours used to work there.
I have to admit that I felt quite successful when I did manage to locate a direct number, so I called there... went through the inevitable automated answering system and then ended up back in the same national hold queue as before!
Seriously???
It definitely gave me an appreciation for the many "services" that allegedly help people get correctly enrolled in Medicare... for the fee of a few hundred dollars.
But then it occurred to me that we are dealing with a group of users that *(still) might include a few disconnected luddites born back in the 1950's and 1960's, and thus not technological natives.
Translation: There's probably a way to do this by filling out a paper form and mailing it in.
And, indeed, it turned out that there was, so I basically "went all analog on their ass;" locating the approprite forms, printing them out and filling in all the same information that had previously been rejected online...
... the only difference here being that there was a spot to fill in my Resident Alien ID number and some other bits of information not found in the online application.
Kinda made me sit back and wonder whether my previous troubles were merely an extension of the current Administration's pervasive attempts to deport anyone who even looks like they might have visited at place outside the USA, in their lifetime.
Sure, I exaggerate... but you probably get the picture.
Now I just get to wait and see what happens next!
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Created at 2025.11.25 00:28 PST
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