How is the world of German health care bureaucracy treating us?
Like it’s never going to let us go.
I found this card in my wallet today, as I tried to figure out where Noah’s bus pass had ended up. They gave it to me shortly after Colin’s original diagnosis, so I would have it on hand if some other medical emergency cropped up on top of the tumor and I had to quickly tell paramedics what was up. I’d forgotten I had it in my wallet until now. I guess now it’s a sad little souvenir.
But it begs the question, why would I need a souvenir? It’s not like it feels as if our efforts to zero out all his debts owed and contracts uncompleted is ever going to come to an end. One of our neighbors is the former health minister for Berlin (why yes, I do live in that kind of neighborhood), and when I asked aloud a few weeks ago if the bills would ever end, he just shook his head “No.” This is going to be with us for a while.
Some of it is just absurd. I thought we were done at the end of November when we finally got a bill for his hospitalization from March. How these facilities stay in business when they wait half a year to bill is beyond me. But that wasn’t the last one. Just last week, we got what should be the final bill from the pharmacy that supplied us while he was in the hospice. I assume it’s only a matter of time until one final bill shows up. At least the rate of arrival has slowed radically.
And, as annoying as the bills are, none of them has quite been so depressing as the bill from the funeral home, which included the special line item for “burial of a child under 12,” which means there’s a special line item for the “burial of a child over 12,” and it really makes you ask yourself what kind of world it is when we need line items like that. But at least the funeral home bill was timely … and less than we anticipated.
Otherwise, the gears of medical bureaucracy simply seem determined to wear us down. I’m in the final weeks of my slow return to work. During this time, I’m technically still on medical leave. You can’t do this program if you’re not on medical leave and I got a sheaf of paperwork before I started from the insurer, explaining how this would work. Since I’m on medical leave, I get paid by my insurer, not work. And it was getting towards the end of November and I realized I hadn’t gotten any money, so I called and asked what the hold-up was.
“We need a new sick note from your doctor,” they said. I pointed out that the only reason I was on this program is because everyone agreed I was still sick. No, they needed a new note. My doctor didn’t know what to make of that. Nor did the lady from human resources at work. So, I got a new note and mailed it to all the required parties.
Today, I got a letter asking for a new sick note. I swear.
Meanwhile, the awful home health company finally got us a bill for May. They didn’t get it to us until November and there were, of course, errors. People were listed as working on days when we had no nurse. One remembers that kind of thing when caring for a dying child. When Christina pointed this out to them, they said it would be difficult to fix the errors, since they had paid the workers for the days listed on the roster. “Not our problem,” we told them, noting that we had pointed the errors out back in June. It took another week or so, but then they got us the bill, helpfully with instructions to pay it within five days.
And then there’s the battle for Colin’s stuff. Even though the insurance paid for all of his breathing machines and food pumps, they don’t want the stuff. They say it’s ours. We don’t need this stuff, so we thought we would donate it to the hospice. It took a couple of months to convince the supplier that we actually owned the stuff and, even then, they managed to abscond from the hospice with one of the breathing machines (they say they’re going to return it). But, once we won that battle, the hospice decided to throw us for another loop and say that they weren’t sure how to handle the donation, since, in their eyes, we hadn’t paid for the stuff. To be clear: They were happy to take the items. They just didn’t want to give us a receipt for tax purposes. It wouldn’t have been a whole lot of money, but, especially after the year we’ve just had, we weren’t really up for forgoing a couple hundred euros in tax returns just because the situation is complicated. We’ve asked them to please check it out and our banker and lawyer friends insist that, although frustrating, this is a problem that can be solved. After all, if someone gave me a car as a gift, I could still donate it and ask for a charitable write-off. This isn’t all that different. Except for the depressing part.
Oh, and the US consulate insisted on issuing a special death certificate. I have no idea why they care. It’s not like he ever set foot in America. But they’ve had his documents for two months and I just found out – after making inquiries – that they’re not getting anything done because the German government hasn’t given them a death certificate yet. I’ve had a death certificate the whole time. This could have been over. Except bureaucracy seems to require that it not be over.
At least there were no bills today. That’s something.