Bureaucratic B.S?

FINALLY- Yet another battle with the VA to get my bill for an outside provider (endocrinologist) paid was settled. My visit was in September of last year.

My problem was getting the VA to do the right thing.  By their own directives - they are supposed to provide me (pay for) an outside provider for a need they (VA) don't provide. As you can tell by the timing, I am relatively persistent. Also (and unfortunately) I am experienced in dealing with their (VA) system when they are dragging their heels about paying anything outside the system.

They did to me what I call "Ping Pong" . To get around it I went to my "ultimate weapon" called the "Patient Advocate", which I highly recommend if you are a trans vet and get caught in the system. (Do NOT get stuck in billing!!!) The woman in billing was quite satisfied telling me I was wrong and hell no they weren't paying. So, I had to keep going back to Advocate monthly to assure them my problem was not solved and I was not going away. Then, they bounced me from Dayton, Ohio to Omaha, Nebraska-who knew absolutely nothing about my case. Two months ago, I got a call from an unknown person who said my claim was to be paid-in 60 days. Really?

So yesterday, the long  unpaid doctors office wrote me a nice letter saying the VA finally paid. Plus, the other silver lining to all of this is (as I have written about here in Cyrsti's Condo) I now have an in house endocrinologist. The problem is, what is stable today could change tomorrow.

I will say though-everybody within the VA system to a person has been kind and caring to me. Plowing through the bureaucracy is the big problem.