Continuing the saga.... Called Optum again again today.? Talked to another Optum agent explaining the situation all over again giving the escalation ticket # from the previous call and that while MY medicare part B was paid, the claim for my SPOUSES medicare part B has not, nor does it appear as pending nor denied.? Agent said I won't see it on my account dashboard ????.? Why not I wonder???? It's a claim against the same FHA funds for the spouse.? Then I got transferred to United Health Care Benefits who wondered why I got there as it is not a UHC Benefit question but a FHA HRA issue... so got transferred again.? After talking with next agent for a little bit it came out that this agent was with Via Benefits !!!!? Why UHC Transferred the call to Via Benefits rather than back to Optum is a mystery (or is it misery ;-) .. so Via Benefits tried transferring the call back to Optum but after several clicks things were disconnected.? Only a 1/2 hour of wasted life to get nowhere.? Called Optum again and got a different agent.? Explained it all again, agent found previous agent notes and after a few more minutes said they were going to resubmit the claim again and it should be processed in about 3 days. ... same story a previous agent told me.? This agent did think one of the agents sent the bank account direct deposit information to the wrong department.? I guess while the account was verified, internally something didn't get properly linked during account setup but the agent that saw the "bug' initially sent the corrective action to the wrong place.? Then while I said I'd answer a survey at the end of the call, I got a dial tone.? I guess they really didn't want my 2 cents worth at this point!
I did get an explanation as to why there are 3 HRA accounts for me.? One active one for this year, one for last year as an artifact, and a dormant one that will hold FHA funds if I drop the UHC health plan in the future.? Can't claim against that one, it would just be a reminder of the promised IBM Funds that one could not access.? Those funds would continue to get interest credits.? Rather than spend all the FHA funds to zero, maybe that is the one to leave a little bit in if one would ever want to come back to IBM's then current health plan if one dropped the current plan and went back to traditional Medicare.
