I feel impelled to correct my previous “show me the money” post.
I re-read a letter I received from Medicare and gave them a call to find out what was going on. Here’s what I was told: Dinkes & Schwitzer had, to my modified amazement, gotten the required information to Medicare. Later rather than sooner, but they did it.
Now that all the necessary paperwork is in the hands of everyone who needs it, I should be getting my check in a couple of weeks.
Or so I told William Schwitzer, in a letter I wrote him today.
Since I can’t praise my lawyers, let me praise Medicare. This is a government agency that does its job, and does it well and in a timely manner. Throughout this process, they have been reporting to Dinkes & Schwitzer, in readable language — and always copying me — what it needed from the lawyers to issue a final statement of what I was required to repay Medicare for their expenditures in caring for my broken metatarsal.
And in the end, even after Medicare and I had worked out how much conditionally I owed them, the final amount is — brace yourself for this because you will be shocked — less than we had worked out. More than $100 less.
What is so wrong about the way Dinkes handled this part of my case is: why didn’t they keep me fully and regularly informed about what they were doing? If they indeed had planned to give Medicare what Medicare needed, why didn’t they tell me?
And that was the essence of my problem throughout with Dinkes: they failed to communicate to me, their client, what was going on with my case. Even when I asked, they failed to answer. Why? What do they imagine they are achieving by keeping the process secret?
What they achieved was a thoroughly deserved grievance against them.