Squeaky wheels . . .

[DollyM]

My husband is a Veteran and we have had to utilize VA Health care for many years due to his job not providing any health insurance. It's not free as many people think unless you have very little income and even then the prescriptions are $8.00 each. (Many of which can be purchases at Wal Mart for $4.00.) We have paid many a dollar to VA over the years, Dr. visits were $50.00 each plus prescriptions so we usually ran a bill with VA that we paid on continually. When Illinois started the All Kids/All Family program, we qualified for medical cards. Amazing, no more driving 70 miles to VA just to see a Doctor and paying a big bill. My husband was able to get good health care close to home. Through a series of events, we ended up in Wisconsin for a year because of a job. The job was not to last so we were delighted to see that Wisconsin had a similar program to provide health care to families with children and we were once again able to get medical cards. However since the VA there was only 10 miles away, my husband would utilize VA on occasion when he could not get into his regular Doctor on a timely basis.
Every time he went to VA, he presented his state medical card, they took it, copied it and handed it back to him. We were shocked to start getting bills from VA again since he had a medical card. My husband had assumed that VA billed the medical card since they did ask for it every time he went to VA. They said they didn't bill another government program. We had a small bill by most people's standards but large for us because of our very small income.
I wrote a letter to Barack Obama late last summer as well as our Congressional Representative in Wisconsin since we were kind of between two states at the time. I received a very nice letter back from Barack Obama promising to look into the matter and asking for permission to look at my husband's case file with VA. Once thing led to another, we moved back to Illinois and I just didn't get around to following through with sending back the permission form. Then I got another letter in late november from Barack Obama stating that he had accepted the position of President of the United States (I had to laugh at this, did he think I had been living under a rock?) and would be turning our information over to the appropriate authorities and would see that they would pursue this issue of our income and the standards that VA had set up for income standards. I kept the letter, figuring it was a piece of history (it really had his signature on it) and didn't give it any more thought.
A few days ago we received a letter from our VA in Illinois stating that they had been contacted by our "congressman" and they were following up. They still wanted income verification for the year before my husband lost his job because that is how VA works, they don't seem to have any understanding that things happen and the years' previous tax return does not mean that is a person's present situation. So I tossed it aside. Today we received a phone call from our VA, very concerned about our situation as they had been contacted our our congressman and they wanted to see what they could do to "help" us. I was bowled over by the apparent sudden concern from VA after they had some pressure from the President of the United States! Amazing! We told them "no thank you, we have learned our lesson and have medical cards to our our local Dr. at no charge." But the fellow insisted they would straighten this up in my husband's records and record him as having no income so when we were ready to use VA again for health care, they would be there for us. We were told there would be another follow up call to get this information properly recorded. Gosh, all this attention, I don't know how to stand it! LOL! It just goes to show you, squeaky wheels do get the attention if they squeak enough and too the right person. And bless Barack Obama's heart for caring about something that was very small in comparison to all the other problems he is dealing with in our country.

[TwilightGardener]

1. Wow! That is quite a story! I'm glad you were able to get some help, after all that--

I would save the letter, too--that's really cool, that he took the time to intervene.