diffculty contacting human being at SSA office Manila ?

[Pib]

Surprisingly it IS possible to open a Medicare online account with a foreign address, I just did it.

Even more surprising they gave an online chat function that actually works and is helpful.
 
I'm in so stunned I have to log off now and lie down from the shock [emoji38]

Medicare and SS online accounts are two different animals. Opening a Medicare acct is far easier. Pretty much just need to know your Medicare number.

Did you mean to say SS versus Medicare?

[Sheryl]

16 minutes ago, Pib said:

Medicare and SS online accounts are two different animals. Opening a Medicare acct is far easier. Pretty much just need to know your Medicare number.

Did you mean to say SS versus Medicare?
 

No, I meant Medicare. SS account is still impossible to open. Because of my SS account being suspended I got a bill for Medicare premiums, which I paid, but now finally it has gotten unsuspended so I wanted to ask about the duplicate payment.

 

It is just that after my experieneces with SS I was not expecting to be able to open an account, let alone get actual online assistance, for any related federal govt service either.

 

Which of course begs the question, if Medicare can let you open an account with an overseas address and transact business why can't SS.

 

You cannot, however, correct an address on the Medicare site, it sends you to the "MySS" account that  you don't/can't have.

 

In addition to entering the wrong bank routing number for my SS direct deposit, the miscreants in Manila somehow erased the name of my provibce from my address - unchanged address where i had been getting SS staements for more than 2 decades, they for some reason decided to alter. And since my city is just "Ampur Muang" having that with no province is not good - though thanks to the postal code most mail has still been gotten  through.

[Pib]

Getting billed for Medicare premiums....yeap, been there, done that....got the tee-shirt.  When Manila messed up my family member's SS pension application by entering a wrong date it took around 6 months to get it corrected....Manila couldn't correct it; only Baltimore.  The error was not noticed until after the application was approved so only Baltimore could correct it.   Baltimore was indeed trying to correct the Manila-generated error but the SSA system has so many error-checking routines they had a hard time getting it corrected.  

 

Anyway, during those six months my family member got billed twice for Medicare Part B premiums...and as you found out Medicare bills for 3 months at a time when billing separately.  You can get it changed to monthly direct debit from your bank account, but generally you can "not" choose to get billed separately as SSA automatically deducts the Medicare premium from your SSA pension and pays it directly to Medicare.  These billings occurred because SSA was still trying to correct the member's record and that correction process actually involved suspension of benefits for brief periods as they deleted errors and reentered corrected data....kinda like wiping the slate clean and reentering everything.  It's a long, horrifying story.

 

Didn't get the first Medicare bill which alerted me to the problem until 4 days after the bill was due....it took like 34 days from the date on the bill until it arrived in the US "APO" military mail...but postmarks showed it wasn't mailed by Medicare until around 3 weeks after the date on the bill.   Whenever your SS benefits get suspended and were enrolled in Part B it triggers the Medicare folks to generate a bill to you since they are not getting paid by SSA.  

 

It's very super easy to get the Medicare folks on the phone 24/7....night and day different that trying to contact SSA folks...yes sir, night and day different.  I explained the issue in how the SSA was working to fix my family SSA pension benefit which would get the Medicare payments automatically going again.  Explained we didn't want to pay the bill knowing SSA was going to get the payment going again soon and if we paid the bill it would ultimately result in double payments....and the Medicare rep agreed that's what would indeed happen.

 

The Medicare rep explained and reassured they just don't cancel/dis-enroll a person from Part B because a person didn't respond to/pay the first bill notice....as there will be a second billing notice 30 days later and even a third final notice billing. Ultimately Medicare would give a person 120 days to pay the bill thru the multiple notices/deadlines to pay.   With that assurance we didn't pay the bill..the Medicare bill was now almost 30 days "past due" and then SSA got the family member's SS pension going again and when getting it going again SS had to pay Medicare 3 months worth of Part B in order to clear the Medicare bill.  Normally only one month is paid....but this ended in an over-payment.

 

Called Medicare again....and they said "once a quarter" their system automatically refunds any over-payments or bills for any underpayments.  Like for the Jan-Mar quarter any over-payments will be refunded in mid Apr,.....for the Apr-Jun quarter any over-payment will refunded in mid July....etc.  However, with that being said, in my family members case, which I guess was handled differently due to the SSA mess-up (or maybe me calling asking about the refund process) the member got the refund approximately one week after the Medicare over-payment occurred....an unexpected direct deposit showed up...I wasn't expect it for months. Cool, Medicare over-payment issue fixed.

 

Then about two months later as my family member's SS pension correction continued its saga (it still wasn't quite right) SSA suspended payments just for a few days as part of the continued record correction process....once again the member got  Medicare Part B for 3 months. We just ignored this bill as the SSA fixed the suspension within days and this time for some reason did not have to pay the 3 month Medicare bill...just the normal one month's worth.  

 

SSA and Medicare are joined-at-the-hip for many Medicare administrative tasks.  A person enrolls in Medicare with SSA; not the Medicare Center as SSA is the one that determines if you are authorized Medicare.   SSA automatically deducts Medicare payments if enrolled in Part B....a person can not pay separately if desired.  Basically SSA handles a lot of basic front-end administrative stuff for Medicare to include address changes....you can't update your address with Medicare....you must update your address with SSA who in turns updates your address with Medicare....or should I say Medicare uses whatever address you have onfile with SSA.

 

Last month we updated our address with Manila...completely dropped our APO mailing address since the APO is shutting down....asked Manila just to delete the APO mailing address and use our Bangkok residential address for both our residential and mailing address.  They already had our Bangkok residential address from when we applied for SS pensions but I gave them our residential address again in the address update request...wanted to be absolutely sure they had our complete and correct Thailand residential address as we had never received a SSA mailing to our residential address...and we included the sub-district and district in that address which takes a second address line right below your street/soil address.  

 

I was fully expecting once Manila updated the address they would get something wrong...misspell something, get something out of order, etc., but they got it right--for both of our SSA records based on reviewing our mySSA online accounts.   Took me a little bit to figure why there was a 929 number at the very end of the address....turns out that's that's the SSA "Consular Code" for Thailand that SSA uses to help ensure foreign mail/checks gets delivered correctly.  I expect your mailing from SSA has a 929 number around the end of your Thailand address? 

 

 

 

[Sheryl]

Yes it has the 929.

 

Your family member's saga is pretty much mine except that I made the mistake of paying Medicare as when the bill arrived I had still not gotten any sort of response from Manila and had no idea how long it was going to take to get my account unsuspended.

 

After the ordeal of trying to get a response from them on the suspended (due to their error) account I am really not up for trying to correct my address (likewise, their error) through Manila. Any idea if I would be able to do this at either local or Baltimore SS office while back in the US? I will be near several and also travel from NYC to DC so even Baltimire possible though a branch office would be more convenient.

 

On a related note I am interested in joining a low or no premium Medicare Advantage plan in US. Will having my Medicare address of record being abriaf prevent me from doing so using a US address?

 

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[Pib]

An address correction should be easy thru Baltimore or any local office....or possibly even contacting the SSA 1800 number as I remember reading a TV post from jingthing I think where he called the 1800 number and changed it over the phone....they also just had a minor correction

 

Can't speak to the Medicare Advantage stuff....not smart enough.  The reason I pay Medicare Part B is because it allows me to retain my military Tricare medical coverage which is good worldwide...even in the universe of Thailand.    Medicare does not provide me any coverage in Thailand (as you know) but for me it allows me to have Tricare coverage in Thailand and whenever I'm back in the US (even for a millisecond) I'm covered under both Medicare and Tricare...dual coverage.

 

[Blue bruce]

Is there a phone number available for the Baltimore S.S. office????

[Sheryl]

Ok thnx. I'll try their 1800 n first then if no joy pop over to an office. Definitely not up for another mega battle trying to get my Manila caseworker to respond....

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