Wednesday 2 April 2014

The sun is shining. THE SUN IS SHINING. THE FREAKING SUN IS SHINING—DO YOU HEAR ME?

Seriously amazing. The temperature is 52 degrees, the crocuses are blooming, the tulips are sprouting, and the snow piles in the corners of parking lots are down to four feet. This is incredible. This is spring in Central New York—and it’s only April 2!

I started the day with Reiki. It just doesn’t get any better than that. Last week I started a day with Time Warner. It just doesn’t get any worse than that. Did you know that Forbes did a survey of the top 17 corporations and their customer service ratings? And Time Warner and ComCast, respectively, got the worst and next-to-worst ratings? And Time Warner and ComCast are merging? I figure that moves the citizens’ revolt against corporate America significantly closer.

Time Warner sent two guys to hook me up to DVR. Neither one could answer my questions about how to operate the system. And, no, there is no written manual; Time Warner doesn’t do that. I have found Time Warner to be revolting for several years. The local vice president’s name is Jeff Unaitis and his phone number is 634-6242. Why don’t you call him up and tell him your problems with Time Warner? He’s getting paid a lot of money to take your call.

Anyway, so I started today with Reiki. One of the Reiki ladies from Crouse Hospital comes to my home for a fee. And you know what she does? She basically channels God to bring me healing. Ain’t that amazing? Immediately she arrived, she told me that I look so-o-o much better. The chiropractor says I’m stronger and the medical massage therapist says I’m heartier. Hey, am I getting it on, or what?

After the Reiki lady, THE WHEELCHAIR REPAIRMAN CAME! It only took four months to get him here. Can you imagine having a defunct alternator on your car and having to wait four months for repair? This is Medicare. This is BIG/GOVERNMENT/BIG/MEDICINE. This is total crap, and—right after Time-Warner-ComCast—the second reason why the people are going to revolt pretty soon. The leading edge of the baby boomers were—like me—born in 1946. As we age out into Medicare we are going to do some serious ass kicking. This is not an acceptable situation.

The wheelchair man’s company required him to require me to hand-write a full page letter asking for Medicare to pay for repairs, and what’s up with that? Since when do you have to say pretty-please to an insurance company? What is going on here? They don’t even let you sign a pre-printed letter. Questions; questions—questions should be asked. When was the last time you hand-wrote a full-page letter? Yeah, me too. I thought I was going to get gangrene in my hand or something.

So after the wheelchair man, I boarded Medicaid transportation. The driver is also the owner of a new transportation company. He has two buses, himself and one other driver, and a woman relative in the office. He’s been in business for five months; it took him a year to get approval from the state. Part of the problem is that Able Medical Transportation’s lawyer is writing letters to Albany trying to block every new vendor who tries to get Medicaid business in Onondaga County.

Basically, the lawyer says that Able used to have about a hundred vans in the business and now is down to fifty and that should be taken as an indication that there isn’t enough business to support a new company. Basically, that is bullshit. The reason Able can’t stay in business is because Frank Taddeo, the previous owner, was engaging in criminal corruption with Wayne Freeman, co-owner of Medical Answering Service. Let me be perfectly clear: I have no evidence that this is factually true. What I do have are some absolutely first-class stories from some sources who are so solidly viable that your own mother would believe them.

What appears to have happened was that Freeman was giving Taddeo illegal business advantages in exchange for whatever Taddeo might have been giving Freeman—Freeman, by the way, was fined $80,000 and forced to sign a Corporate Integrity Agreement with the NYS Office of the Medicaid Inspector General. AND YOU PEOPLE SAY THAT MEDICAID RECIPIENTS COMMIT FRAUD??

Dear hearts, the most fraudulent people in the Medicaid system are the subcontractors and the government administrators, not the recipients. That’s where the big money can and is being made in crooked dealings. But did I say that Freeman and Taddeo were engaged in corrupt practices? I did not. I only said they APPEARED to be—and on any given day you can get at least three people to swear that I am psychotic.

All I know for sure is that since the Inspector General worked over Freeman, Able Medical can’t get enough business because they’re a freakin’ bad company. In a good capitalist society, the best business gets the most customers and Able is being put out of business by its own bad practices—broken-down dirty vans, broken-down drunk drivers, etc.

So today I went to a new physician, and maybe I’ll tell you about that tomorrow.

Then again, maybe not.

About annecwoodlen

I am a tenth generation American, descended from a family that has been working a farm that was deeded to us by William Penn. The country has changed around us but we have held true. I stand in my grandmother’s kitchen, look down the valley to her brother’s farm and see my great-great-great-great-great-grandmother Hannah standing on the porch. She is holding the baby, surrounded by four other children, and saying goodbye to her husband and oldest son who are going off to fight in the Revolutionary War. The war is twenty miles away and her husband will die fighting. We are not the Daughters of the American Revolution; we were its mothers. My father, Milton C. Woodlen, got his doctorate from Temple University in the 1940’s when—in his words—“a doctorate still meant something.” He became an education professor at West Chester State Teachers College, where my mother, Elizabeth Hope Copeland, had graduated. My mother raised four girls and one boy, of which I am the middle child. My parents are deceased and my siblings are estranged. My fiancé, Robert H. Dobrow, was a fighter pilot in the Marine Corps. In 1974, his plane crashed, his parachute did not open, and we buried him in a cemetery on Long Island. I could say a great deal about him, or nothing; there is no middle ground. I have loved other men; Bob was my soul mate. The single greatest determinate of who I am and what my life has been is that I inherited my father’s gene for bipolar disorder, type II. Associated with all bipolar disorders is executive dysfunction, a learning disability that interferes with the ability to sort and organize. Despite an I.Q. of 139, I failed twelve subjects and got expelled from high school and prep school. I attended Syracuse University and Onondaga Community College and got an associate’s degree after twenty-five years. I am nothing if not tenacious. Gifted with intelligence, constrained by disability, and compromised by depression, my employment was limited to entry level jobs. Being female in the 1960’s meant that I did office work—billing at the university library, calling out telegrams at Western Union, and filing papers at a law firm. During one decade, I worked at about a hundred different places as a temporary secretary. I worked for hospitals, banks, manufacturers and others, including the county government. I quit the District Attorney’s Office to manage a gas station; it was more honest work. After Bob’s death, I started taking antidepressants. Following doctor’s orders, I took them every day for twenty-six years. During that time, I attempted%2

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