A note for all that are planning to change their name and gender, or even just your name change.
It appears that I have fallen down the rabbit hole into a mess of dropped and still bouncing balls as our dear sister @Stevi has experienced with SSA, Medicare and Kaiser, failing to properly update their records.
As Stevi has informed us in her thread, it is not enough to expect SSA to complete their process of properly updating their records. With all my legal documents in hand, I filed my name and gender change with SSA back in October of last year. Their records reflect all the correct changes and I received a new card. However, they failed to update their MASTER RECORD so that Medicare could follow up with their record change process.
I finally contacted Medicare to see what their holdup was only to learn that SSA had dropped the ball. Two calls to SSA later, I finally got them to update their MASTER RECORD. Great! Medicare then followed up with their records changes and sent me my new Medicare card 7 days later. Again, Great! Upon receiving my new MC card, I contacted Kaiser Member Services and requested updates and a new card.
After a month, I started sending emails and calls to Kaiser Member Services. They too had dropped the ball and didn't follow up. Member services just kept telling me they had to wait for a updated file from Medicare? And now, another month later, (Today), I called Medicare to find out why this updated file has not been sent to Kaiser? They told me it is Kasier's responsibility to contact Medicare??? Ok, my head is spinning now!
During my call with Medicare this morning, I learned that my gender marker had not been properly update by SSA. So, back to SSA with a call to their main office, They found their gender marker mistake in their master records but were unable to correct it from their end? They told me it had to be corrected at the local office that I originally filed my legal documents with. The SSA representative was very apologetic and helpful (which is saying alot since they are not being payed right now) and went out of her way to forward a request to my local SSA office to update my gender marker in their master record and forward the correction to Medicare. They already have my correct gender marker in their records, just not in the master record.
Realizing it was not all Kaiser's fault for the holdup, I called member services again this morning and informed them of the mistake by SSA. Member services then informed me that they had been contacted by Medicare and actually had all my new information, just the wrong marker, and asked her supervisor if it was possible for them to just update my medical records and send me a new card. Her supervisor then sent the request to the main Kaiser office.
Because my Kaiser health care plan goes through Medicare, I may still have to wait for another around of updates. The member services representative told me to give it two more weeks for Kaiser to ok the update and if I haven't received a new med card yet, to start calling and emailing again!!!
So, bottom line, don't expect them to do their job complete and correctly for one reason or another. Their personnel may not even know the proper procedures. You will have to do their job for them. You will need to be diligent and patient with them. They really are trying to do the right thing.
Hugs!
