Health Insurance

         Sometime in late November or early December, I got a couple of unpaid doctor bills.  When the third one arrived, I began to believe something had gone amiss.  Then I got notice that I had a new Medicare statement, so I decided I had better look at it.  When I did, the claims were all denied.  The footnotes told me that Medicare was not my primary insurer, that I needed to submit these claims to my primary insurer.

      A vague memory began to stir in my brain, a rather strange incident I had shrugged off.  In late September or early October, I got a call from the secretary of the grade school in the district where I used to work.  She asked me where she should send my health insurance cards. 

     What?  I haven’t been on Kansas Blue Cross/Blue Shield for six or seven years, ever since I signed up for Medicare.  “Oh,” she said.  “I’ll check it out with the superintendent’s

 office.”

      I never gave the incident another thought.  Until I started getting doctor bills.  I called Medicare.  They had a wait list.  Would I like them to call me back?  I left my number.  I hadn’t taken ten steps down the hallway before my phone rang and it was Medicare on the line.

     The young man asked for my particulars to prove to himself that I was who I said I was.  He looked into my account and informed me that my primary insurer was Kansas Blue Cross/Blue Shield.  “Since when?” asked I.

       “Since October 22,” said he.  That insurer informed Medicare that I was on their policy since that date.

      I put in a call to the superintendent’s office in Kansas to try to begin solving my problem.  It was between Christmas and New Year’s.  I doubted anyone would be in the office, but it didn’t cost anything to try.

     The superintendent himself answered the phone.  Before I could get two sentences into telling him my problem, he put me on hold.  There I stayed for three or four minutes.  I hung up and tried the number again.  No answer.

     I fumed and fussed a brief while.  I consoled myself by assuring myself he wouldn’t know anything anyway.  He was a former superintendent who had been on the school board.  He gave up that position to become superintendent again, this time as interim,  when the district could not find a suitable candidate for the office.

     Some things never change.  Enough said.

     I called a third time and left a message for the secretary who wouldn’t get it until into January when school started again.  She wouldn’t know anything either, because she replaced the former secretary who had resigned in September.  I can guess why she resigned.

     I went next to Kansas Blue Cross/Blue Shield.  Amazing enough, I only talked to two people, the first one turning me over to someone who could help me with my problem.  The second lady said I was on the policy but I wasn’t on the policy.  The school district was not paying my premium.  Obviously, neither was I.  But somehow I was on the list.

     She said she would check it out further and notify Medicare that it was a mistake.  I should not have Blue Cross/Blue Shield as my primary insurer.

      A few days later, I called Medicare back, a different number this time, the one the first Medicare guy gave me for problem resolution.  This lady grilled me for my personal information, then opened my account.  It showed that Blued Cross had notified them of the mistake and they were taking steps to rectify it.  It could take up to 45 days to happen.  What do I do about my unpaid bill.  “You will have to resubmit it.”

       Next, I called CU Med where I had the unpaid bill.  I told the lady there what happened.  She asked me when the problem would be resolved.  “If” it will be resolved, I amended her question.  She laughed and I told her about the 45 days.  She said okay.  Should I pay the bill?  No, we will resubmit it.  OK.

      About the second week in January, Secretary Emily, a former student, called me from the superintendent's office.  After chatting a bit, she asked me why I called.  I told her the whole story.  She didn’t know anything about it.  She hadn’t handled the insurance business.  I told her not to worry about it, that I had contacted Blue Cross and I thought we were on the way to solving the problem.  I refrained from saying anything about her boss.

        February arrives.  I get a notice from Medicare a new statement is available.  I jump through the hoops and get access to my statement.  Two claims, one paid (“yea!”), one denied (“boo!”).  One more call to Medicare.  Some serious hold time on the phone in this case.  The answer, when I finally get it:  the blood lab has to resubmit the claim.  Head slap:  “I should have known.”

     I don’t have a bill for the lab work yet.  I am waiting for my March claim statement.  

      Mark Twain defined an innocent bystander as someone who doesn’t have sense enough to get out of the way.  I wonder if I qualify.      

Carlsbad Caverns

      Vast.

     That may be the best word for Carlsbad.  To get there from here, you cover a vast amount of territory.  You will be about 170 miles from El Paso, Texas.

      Passing through the town of Carlsbad to get to the caverns, after crossing about 20 miles more of the endless flatlands, you pass through some pretty good-sized hills, though nothing near the Rocky Mountains we know.

     The entrance to the cavern sits on top of a hill.  The view to the south is vast.  (Not unlike the view to the south from the Genoa Tower, to use a universal reference that everyone will understand!)

      From the visitor center, you make a choice of walking down the pathway to the caverns, or you can opt for an elevator ride of some 750 feet.  Forty years ago, I took the walk.  I find I didn’t remember much of the caverns from that first visit, excepting their vastness, of course.  I do remember that my knees complained from the downhill trip.

      This time, we chose the elevator.  Before entering the elevator, a ranger goes over the rules of the cavern:  get rid of your gum, don’t leave any trash, don’t touch anything, bring a flashlight (for sale at the gift shop), whisper if you must talk because sound carries all over the caverns, etc.

     For $5, you can rent a telephone that comments on things all the way through the caverns.  When you come upon a sign with a number on it, you push that number into your rented phone and listen to the commentary.  It’s probably worth the money. If you walk down, there are 50 talking points.  If you ride the elevator down, you do numbers 20 through 50.

       Getting off the elevator, you can visit the restrooms for the last time, buy a snack or drink, which you cannot take with you as you enter the touring area, or sit a spell before taking the tour—especially helpful to those who have make the trip afoot.  You can buy a flashlight, too.

     Another thing I did not remember from my first visit was a way to walk back to the surface--estimated time, 45 minutes to an hour.  About ten minutes into the cavern, you can choose to short circuit the main route and head back to the elevators if you have had enough.  We took the long way.  After all, we had to get our money’s worth.  (Actually, our admission was free via our national parks pass.) 

      The voice on the telephone tried to give the listener an idea of how big the caverns are by comparing the number of football fields that could be fitted into the space.  It is huge.  The roof or ceiling in places is several feet high.    

     It would be difficult to fit one football field in there, practically speaking, because there isn’t much flat space.  Stalactites and stalagmites appear everywhere along with crevices and fissures and small pools of water.  Words can’t do the place justice.  Neither can my pictures.  I couldn’t see well enough to turn on the camera’s flash.

   Without the telephone guide, we would have missed a lot, including the history of the discovery and development of the place.  One thing we would certainly have missed was a rope dangling from a dome several feet above us. 

     The story is that some intrepid spelunkers wanted to climb up into the dome, so they floated a helium balloon up with a rope and some sort of anchor.  They managed to get the rope hooked to something up there, not sure how, and one brave guy then proceeded to climb the rope and hook it firmly so other explorers could climb up and take a look.

     Another marvel is the lighting.  The telephone voice said a Hollywood lighting specialist designed the lighting.  When you look at where the lights are stationed, you have to wonder how they ever manage to change a burned out bulb.

      In the olden days, there was a point on the guided tour where the Ranger could shut off the lights and the visitors got to experience total darkness for a few moments.  They don’t do that anymore.  If a power failure occurs, an emergency generator takes over.  If it fails, some lights have their own battery and can take over for a long enough time to get everybody out of the cave.

      The caverns were formed by water.  Water still infiltrates, allowing the formations to continue growing, and pools of water to remain.  It takes eight months for surface water to percolate down into the caves. 

      Now, the biggest changes to the caverns are caused by people.  The visitor center and its paved parking lot cover up a lot of territory where water once could soak in and down, for example.  A surprising thing, lint from people’s clothes, has to be removed occasionally.  I shouldn’t be surprised.  Melvin, our deceased school janitor friend, once said that judging from the lint and hair he swept up at the end of the day, he wondered that the students weren’t all naked and bald.

      A couple of things occurred to me during our visit: what would an earthquake do to the caverns?  The Ranger lady said the caves would be the safest place to be in an earthquake.  The shock waves get transmitted through solids, like earth and rock.  When the waves hit the caves filled with air, they dissipate rapidly, air being more flexible than rock or earth.  I would still prefer to be on the surface if a quake comes.

     The second thing I thought about was a sinkhole somewhere (Florida?) that swallowed up several Corvettes on display some years ago.  If a fissure developed on the surface above the caverns, several cars dropping through the gap wouldn't amount to a morsel in the cavern's maw.  Maybe I should quit thinking.

     Our trip took us the better part of two hours, stopping to listen to thirty-some explanations. Not once did the caverns stimulate my claustrophobia, they are that vast.  We rode the elevators back up and headed for the cafeteria.   

     Having refreshed ourselves, we headed home.  North we went through Roswell (sorry, I couldn’t revisit the UFO museum) and onto Fort Sumner where we overnighted.  We rejoined the rat race (also known as I-25) near Las Vegas, NM and on home.

      

Beyond Words

     It is somewhat like pictures of Salt Flats I have seen, the place where daredevil drivers try to break land speed records, except that Salt Flats are, well, flat.  White Sands National Monument has snowdrifts.  Make that sand drifts.  Make that gypsum drifts.

     The National Park has hills, too.  Perhaps the most amazing thing is that things grow, plants grow, in the gypsum drifts.

     It’s possible to tour the white sands without ever leaving your car.  The paved road from the visitor center gives way to sand roads that for all the world look like roads in snow country complete with ridges thrown up by snowplows.  When the wind blows above 16 miles per hour, if I remember correctly, the gypsum sand drifts.  Snow plows clear the roads in the wake of the windstorm and the park is back in business.

     I am not sure if they close the park under windy conditions, but I would not want to be driving my car if the sand was drifting.  If you have ever dealt with sheetrock or cleaned up after a sheetrock project, you know how clingy the particles can be, though the sands aren’t as fine or powdery as sheetrock gypsum is. 

     The word is that the gypsum washed down out of hills surrounding the park.  Then the wind blows the flakes and particles.  The sifting tumbling action breaks the bigger particles down into the fine sand. 

      You could drive around and never get out of your car.  But you are encouraged to get out.  There are walkways and a few trails, a place to unload your horse trailer, for instance.  They even sell the disk type sleds in the gift shop so you can take a ride down a sand hill.

      We watched a camper slide down a good-sized hill.  As I watched, the thought upper most in my mind was how to get the sand out of my clothes, particularly out of my underwear.  What a wimp I have become in my old age.

      We stuck to the walking paths constructed with recycled plastic decking.  It was a beautiful day with only a light breeze and plenty of sunshine.  The winds wipe out all the tracks left by creatures.  We only saw tracks made by humans, but if you get there early after a windstorm has erased the desert, you should be able to see tracks left by insects, birds, snakes, lizards, and rodents that call the place home.

     We began our exploration of National Parks at the Grand Canyon.  That really is beyond words, or even pictures.  The sheer size of the canyon challenges the imagination.

      We took a tour package, which was good and not so good.  We stayed at the Railroad Hotel in Williams, AZ, which included four meals at the Harvey House. That was all good and well, with the possible exception of the fact that our first night at the Harvey House, the beer machine was out of order.  I managed to survive.

     On the morning when we checked out, I realized I should have delayed my supper on that first night and spent a little time in the hotel bar.  It was magnificent with all the old-time fixtures such as a gigantic mirror behind the bar and the grand woodwork everywhere.

     In addition to hotel and meal accommodations, our package included a train ride to and from the canyon.  Once we arrived at the canyon terminal, we were entitled to a bus tour of the canyon rim.  I wouldn’t take that bus tour, if I had to do it again.

      During the train trip, each car had a tour guide.  Not everyone in our car had the same tour.  Some would stay overnight in the cabins at the park’s headquarters area.  Some would wander around for the three hours before the train returned to Williams.  Our guide was making suggestions for all of us.

     For the ones returning on the train, she suggested about an hour walk along the rim of the canyon.  That’s what we should have done.  On the bus tour, we stopped at two parking sights along the rim and we had about 30 minutes to wander around at each site.  Our tour included lunch at one of the three or four places to eat at the park headquarters.  Then we had another 45 minutes or so to wander around before the train left.

      So we spent a little over an hour actually looking at the canyon.  The rest of our time was on the bus, in the cafeteria, or “ta-dah”, the gift shops.  I would do things differently if I could.

     A free shuttle takes you out to a far point.  You could ride the shuttle back or pick it up at a few other places along the line.  Or you can walk the rim trail back to park headquarters and the railroad.

     It was a cold windy day the day we were there, but it was tolerable.  We stayed warm on the bus.  Plus the bus driver/tour guide was a rather roughhewn lady who could handle the Greyhound-sized bus and talk. at the same time.  She regaled us with stories of people going over the edge of the canyon to their doom.  It was all in the name of keeping us safe, of course.  But it pandered to our interest in death and dying by accident.

     She said the Park tries to keep a lid on the deaths as much as possible, but they have to acknowledge that people do go over the edge.  The canyon is a big place, a huge place, and it isn’t possible to fence or wall off every bit of it.  As she said, there are fences and rails, rock walls, and unprotected raw edges to the canyon.  There was also ice and snow on some of the pathways the day we were there.  Stay back from the edge.

     No problem for me.  I can’t bring myself to within two or three feet of a drop-off that plunges straight down for feet and yards.  One lady who held some important position but not identified by name stood by the edge of the canyon when a gust of wind took off her hat.  She tried to grab her hat.  She is no more.

       She also told about cars going over the edge.  As she said, those had to be planned.  The roads and parking lots are all hemmed in pretty well.  A driver has to have knowledge beyond what a normal tourist would have to get a car over the edge of the canyon.  She didn’t say, but they must all be suicides.  What she did say was that hardly anybody used their own car.  They all went over in a rental from Hertz or Enterprise.

    

     The train ride to and from the canyon was entertaining.  Our hostess was a fount of information.  Before we boarded the train, at 8 a.m., four cowboys put on a show that involved real live horses, real live six guns with blanks for ammo, and a spoofy shootout.  After about a ten-minute show, they herded us onto our train car.  The Marshall in the shootout boarded the train and went along to “protect” us.  We also had two guitar players who sang western songs, one going and a different one coming back. 

    On the return trip, nearing Williams in somewhat forested terrain, we were notified there was “trouble ahead.”  Outside the train, two guys on horses, the same guys in the morning shootout, rode up beside the train and fired their six-shooters in the air.  We couldn’t hear them, but we could see the smoke from the gun barrels.  No fear, the Marshall was on board to protect us and the train wouldn’t stop.

      But then the train did stop.  The two handkerchiefed bad guys boarded the train and “held us up”.  We all tossed a few tips into the short guy’s leather bag.  A little later, after the train began to move again, the Marshall entered our car and said he had the bad guys in custody and we could reclaim our lost items by reporting to his office, three blocks from the train station.  And by identifying bills by serial number or photos of lost property plus affidavits pertaining to those losses.

     The train ride was fun.  The beer machine in the Harvey House was back in working order.  All was well.  We did have to go to three gift shops because the tour package contained two $20 gift certificates.  No sense leaving cash on the table, eh?

      Snow from Flagstaff to Williams—not warm desert in this part of Arizona.

Using the site locater

     We went from Williams to Tucson where we interviewed at the airport for our “Global Entry” pass.  We couldn’t get in at DIA for an interview until next July, more than a year after our application was accepted.  You only have a year from the application date to get the interview. We originally applied in June, thinking to use Global Entry when we came back from Italy in October, but we couldn’t get into DIA until the end of October at that time.  No problem scheduling an interview in Tucson.

     We spent a week in Tucson, then on to Carlsbad, New Mexico.