This is why you will rarely see a special needs parent step up to manage a school auction. And yes, I actually sat down this morning, after opening up my inbox to discover my second piece of bad news for the day (more legal details to come) and shared all of these details with a bored bureaucrat who will most likely stamp my appeal “REJECTED” from some throne in the sky. I guess this is the Jerry Springer-ization of my life for some stranger.
Dear Benefits Claim and Appeal Manager,
I have just learned this morning that the Dependent Care FSA (DCFSA) requires annual re-enrollment. I had no idea that this was the case; I understood that I did not have to make any changes to my medical plan, if I intended to maintain a particular deductible level from year to year. I also understood that Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) would be covered with pre-authorization, during the upcoming 2013/14 plan year. I’m noting this point in particular to demonstrate that I felt that I had indeed read through the necessary material pertaining to any changes from year to year, since I have an autistic son, and the details of my medical insurance are obviously quite important to me and to the financial well-being of our family.
However, I did not see any details about the necessity of re-enrolling for the DCFSA. I’m sure that there was some mention of this somewhere along the way; but I honestly did not see this, or I most certainly would have re-enrolled. You see, I pay attention to a lot of details[1]. I do all of this to avoid bankruptcy, as the therapies for my son cost approximately $4,500/month.
So somewhere along the way, I assumed that I did not have to “re-up” my monthly DCFSA set-aside, which I use for a tiny amount of tax relief for costs associated with sending my daughter to day-care, and soon “extended day” services for DC’s free pre-school programs (which I need in order to continue working for AcmeCorp and earning insurance benefits for my entire family).
In other words, I am pleading with you to allow me to enroll in AcmeCorp’s DCFSA benefit program, even though it is now August 14th, 2013. While there is no particular “new” life event to help rationalize this request, every day brings more bills, paperwork, and legal issues related to my autistic son[2]. These are daily “life events” that most certainly present an understandable distraction from some of the smaller details – such as the need to re-enroll in the DCFSA benefit each year – that managed to elude me during the daily deluge of autism-related details.
I hope that you see this long letter as an honest explanation of events from an exhausted and well-meaning mother. And I hope that you can understand how and why I failed to note the re-enrollment rules for DCFSA.
Sincerely,
Maya
[1] I have to file a claim for all of my son’s providers with whoever my health insurance provider happens to be. I then wait for the EOB to return from the insurance provider, scan that, and send it back to the service provider, who then sends the EOB onto Medicaid, who provides secondary coverage for all of the many treatments/therapies that Blue Cross Blue Shield and United Health Care do not cover. I have to manage all of the payments from health insurance providers, pass these on to service providers, follow-up with the insurer to investigate why a particular CPT code or date of service was rejected during any particular month, and maintain communication with the service provider, the insurer, and Medicaid.
[2] We are currently in the middle of a major legal battle with the DC Public School System, which allowed my son to lose all of his language and potty training skills during the past school year, among other crimes over the years (i.e. not noticing for 30+ minutes that he had left school property and wandered off to a field next to a six lane road), allowing him to eat garbage, and putting him in a classroom with a teacher who was not licensed nor certified to teach special education in the District of Columbia).
Hi Maya,
We are special needs parents on a similar journey.
I’m so impressed with your strength & persistence.
Could I ask a question? What software do you use to track your
insurance, claims, EOBs, and Medicaid filings?
I’m deep in the dirt over that!
Wouldn’t it have been easier to simply stay on top the paperwork, submit the renewal materials as required and NOT have to grovel to get it reinstated?
Kaylee: of course that would have been simpler. But we all make mistakes. And with special needs kids we’re overwhelmed and tend to make them more often than the average bear.
Kaylee, have you never forgotten anything, misplaced something, missed a deadline? Never? Well, life happens, and life with a special needs child, is incredibly hectic. Of course, it would have been easier to just re-enroll. But it wasn’t on purpose and in these cases, a little compassion goes a long way.
Kaylee: Wouldn’t it be easier if cancer could be cured with Advil? Wouldn’t it be easier if pedophiles didn’t exist? Wouldn’t it be easier if people commenting on blog posts written by honest, tired, frustrated parents who needed to be lifted up weren’t commented on by sanctimonious asshats?
Lay off lady.
Wouldn’t it be easier to be rich and not have to worry about money? I find it very irresponsible that you weren’t born into wealth, Maya. My disappointment knows no bounds.
I miss deadlines daily, so I feel your pain. The piles of paperwork truly haunt me! It sucks when it bites you like this.
To Mary, you and whomever else is overwhelmed with tracking everything…I just discovered this app that I’m kinda in love with: Simplee. (I get nothing out of sharing this info with you but the joy of perhaps saving you a few seconds of time here and there.)
Also, I’ve had my own nightmares with insurance. Here’s one laughable absurdity: http://www.whac-a-mole-life.com/2012/02/letter-from-my-insurance-provider.html
Or what Jillsmo said. Let’s just all do that.
Of course I make mistakes all the time – everybody does!
However, insurance companies provide exquisitely detailed instructions on his to seek/maintain coverage. Government programs also provide exquisitely detailed instructions to seek/maintain coverage — and helpfully post their policies and procedures online.
Clearly, doing the (incredibly annoying, time-consuming, endless) late work to maintain the services your son needs is low on your personal priorities list. The sad thing is, your son will likely suffer because you’ve apparently got better things to do than deal with all that paperwork!
Your comment seems to ignore the very real fact that I have to pay attention to an enormous pile of paperwork, therapy and doctor’ appointments, insurance forms, insurance policies, IEP documents, legal documents, legal dates, and oh yeah….all of the therapists that come through my house each week.
Either you are not a special needs parent, or you have managed to magically fly above the day-to-day grind of details required to parent and fight for a special needs child and manage to keep a close eye on all of it. If you have achieved the latter, then I beg you to share with me your miracle methodology. I will then share your methodology with the world, which will instantaneously make you a hero and possibly quite a rich person, thanks to the applause and worship by special needs parents across the world.
In fact, perhaps you should write a book. I will be the first person to buy it from you, provided that it is perfectly edited, footnoted, and illustrated.
Also, if you are going to do a drive-by insult to special needs parents, based on the assumption that you could handle it better than us (it’s amazing how easy it is to make armchair comments without actually jumping into the ring and giving someone else’s life a shot), at least don’t be a fucking pussy. Paste your actual email address and phone number. It’s incredibly easy to insult a total stranger–who is brave enough to own up to her own flaws, while painting an accurate picture of the incredibly complex context in which she and her son exist–via the medium of the “anonymous” Internet. However, you end up looking like a coward (reminds me of that poor mother and grandmother up in Canada, who received an anonymous hate letter from another ignorant, spineless neighbor). I would be more than eager to humor your “heartfelt”, “helpful”, “well-meaning” suggestions if you had the uterus to offer these up in a face-to-face conversation. It’s just pretty damned hard to take you seriously when you say something in the internet school yard and then run away cackling. BE BRAVE. TELL ME WHAT A TERRIBLE PARENT I AM TO MY FACE. Oh, and please make sure to tell my children how much they suffer because of my parenting.
Karma’s a bitch, bitch.
Dear Sallie or Kaylee,
Ironically, after contributing the name of this blog, I haven’t really contributed much. My wife is such a great writer and I think it is very cathartic for her. So, I am generally happy to read, but not write. Your comments really enraged me though. I felt compelled to respond, not because Maya needs anyone to defend her. She is more than capable of doing that. But because I know she’d never tell you how truly grueling her day to day life is and how heroically she faces it.
I’m guessing a country name like Sallie/Kaylee is your “Christian” name and further guessing you’d probably identify yourself as one, much to the chagrin of any real Christians. I myself am not certain whether God exists, but I am certain that if he exists, Christ himself would revile your commentary. Apparently you missed the part of the Bible that warns, “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone”.
Even if you aren’t calling yourself a “Christian”, being judgmental is not the best quality an individual can have to begin with (particularly for a “Christian”). Even more disturbing is that you’ve managed to raise what is normally merely an annoying, albeit nearly ubiquitous, quality to a sinister little art form. Your inaccuracy is matched only by your ignorance. Your ruthlessness is matched only by your vanity.
You proclaim that basically, if you were in charge of our son’s life, all would indeed be well and yet you know exactly NOTHING about it. Do you even know how many insurance companies we’ve run through in the last few years either because we’ve been dropped or had to switch jobs because of our sons needs? Do you have any idea how many therapists and doctors my son requires…no you don’t. If you did you would realize that keeping up with his insurance paperwork and all of the litigation related obligations to try to get our son a decent education, instead of being allowed to wander off alone in the city (like he was 3 times in public school) or allowed to eat garbage (like he was on multiple occasions), actually IS a full time job.
Then you can add to that full time job her actual full time job, a demanding job as a manager for one of the most prestigious consulting organizations in the world. However, whenever that work load is less than 50+ hours a week she always adds some photography to it to help make ends meet. She also tries to run a support group for parents of autistic children in our area. Oh that’s right, I should mention that we are also trying to help train the DC Metropolitan Police Dept to better understand autistic people. We are hoping that after doing so we can worry less about our son getting shot when he gets a bit older and accidentally steals something from a store (because he has no concept that you need to pay for things) and then ignores police officers when he’s told to get his hands out of his pockets and they think he’s armed.
My sense of decorum prohibits me from telling you what I really think of you. A smug little bitch like you would have no concept of the never ending sacrifices my wife makes on a daily basis for our son and our family. Compared to a ruthless and nasty person like you, my wife is a living saint.
She works at the equivalent of 3 jobs well into the wee hours of the morning and does so nearly EVERY night! I only work the equivalent of 2 jobs and I can’t tell you how interminably exhausting it is to wake up two or three times every night to either the sobs or outright blood curdling screaming of your inconsolable child. And just maybe, if you are lucky, you can string together 4 hours of sleep each night. But you never really sleep. You’ll always have an ear to that common wall of our bedrooms. Always listening to make sure our son doesn’t escape from our Fort Knox like house (where nearly every door, drawer or cabinet is physically locked down with metal locks) and wander off into traffic or jump into a pool without knowing how to swim.
You can comment on my wife’s failure to file paperwork promptly the next time your hands are red and cracking from the countless times you’ve washed your 6 year old son’s fecal matter off of everything he owns, everything you own, everything in your entire home and from your own hair and body. Maybe when your hands ache from scrubbing things clean you won’t feel so superior. You can expound on the error of her ways in her paperwork handling when your child kicks and screams so violently and bites you so hard that he draws blood and yet he cannot even tell you what is bothering him. When you drive your child 100 miles a day just to get him into a decent school and you take your child to 2 occupational therapy appointments, 2 speech therapy appointments, 4 or more Applied Behavior Analysis appointments and at least one other doctor’s appointment (take your pick from his shrink, his pediatrician, his geneticist, his dietician, his allergist or whatever doctor du jour is necessary) EVERY SINGLE WEEK then you may have a right to criticize and even then…would you? I think not.
No, I think you’re an armchair tourist of other people’s misery..trying to tell us all to “boot strap” it and how it really isn’t a big deal. I am imagining you smugly telling us, “Just Do it”, or some equally obnoxious and meaningless motivational jargon.
Our life is not a Nike ad you asshole. So, why don’t you just shut the fuck up!
Proud to be Maya’s Husband,
Greg
P.S….sorry about that decorum 🙂
Hard to tell who has less compassion here: Kaylee the commenter or the insurance business.
We parents raising children with special needs are constantly, constantly at battle. It’s enough to fight the schools for fair services, the system, the medical establishments, and society’s cruel judgement, but to throw in those who cast stones behind the laptop keys seems plain old cruel.