I died, but I am better now

L

Lewis Clark

Thinks s/he gets paid by the post
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Aug 2, 2018
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Last weekend I tried to renew a prescription at my online pharmacy, only to discover that I no longer had pharmacy coverage with my health insurance. When I called the insurance company (Tricare) I was told I no longer had any health insurance coverage at all.

I am retired military, so I called the Defense Enrollment Eligibility Reporting System (DEERS) to find out what happened to my health insurance. DEERS said the system showed me as deceased. This was a bit of a surprise to me. DEERS said I needed to go to the nearest military base to get the error fixed.

I went to military base ID card office to find out what was happening. Turns out that the Social Security Administration (SSA) reported that I had died on December 25, 2021, though they had no death certificate to prove it. Obviously a typo somewhere at the SSA.

The ID card office got things fixed at their end. Then I was on hold for 30 minutes with the local SSA office. Got lucky and spoke to an empathetic person who got it fixed by the next day. They are sending me a letter explaining the error in case I need it.

Interestingly, my mother's brokerage company called her to ask what was up with me, since I am a joint owner of her account. I have my own funds at several brokerage companies and none of them reached out to my supposed widow. My main credit union knew nothing about it and my accounts there are working.

I'll be calling my other brokerage companies as soon as I have a free moment.

Has this happened to anyone else? If so, did you have any serious problems fixing all of the resulting problems?
 
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Any particular interesting tidbits from the other side? We are dying to know :)
 
I helped a friend of mine with all the notifications when her husband died. He was a retired vet, they had tri-care, etc. We called and were told what to send them which we did. A few weeks later she received a letter from the military telling her husband that they were sorry she died. Ugh!
 
Not quite as bad, but shortly after FIRE, megacorp sent me a communication that my company-sponsored retiree health insurance had been terminated. Naturally, this happened on a Friday and I couldn't reach Megacorp Retiree Benefits until Monday. They said "WHOOOPS! That was an error. We'll fix it." Of course, nothing came in the mail to confirm but I never actually had a problem upon presenting my credentials for health care. Still, it could have caused a heart attack! YMMV
 
ejman said:
Any particular interesting tidbits from the other side? We are dying to know :)
Click to expand...

Well ... I've been in Ohio for the past week blowing some dough. Might as well spend it all now that I have a very good estimate on my life expectancy. The "other side" is quite a bit colder than I had been led to believe. : )

At least I know for sure when to take social security (if only I were old enough to collect it)!
 
Wow - amazed that you were able to get it resolved so quickly, SSA on the phone, etc.!
 
Lewis Clark said:
I was also amazed. I thought 30 minutes on hold was much better than expected.
Click to expand...

Maybe some heavenly body on the other side was in your corner :LOL:

Seriously, how awful! I hope you get everything straightened out and there are no future repercussions from this!
 
That would be terrible for that to happen.
 
The secret to immortality... 2 phone calls. ;)


_B
 
I retired with 35 years in social services including public assistance programs.
We would get reports on people who had died from SSA to remove them from our system.
Errors happened a lot more often than you would think!
Of course this was the mid 80’s so you would hope it’s been improved somewhat.
It was a real pain to get these records straightened out.
I’m glad you are feeling better though. [emoji38]
 
I was going to ask you if you experienced a near death experience but I guess that doesn’t apply in this case.
 
So the sage continues ....

After speaking to the Defense Finance Center (DFAS) in mid-January, and having them tell me the situation was fixed at their end, I find the situation is getting worse.

DFAS did not pay my retired pay at the end of January, and they locked access to my online pay account. I spoke to them on Feb 7 and was told they could not act on the forms I faxed to them on Jan 19(!) because my signature was not readable enough on the fax to clearly tell if it was my signature. So naturally they did nothing. Nobody thought to tell me there was a problem ... and they do have my current contact information.

But on Feb 7 DFAS told me it should be fixed by the end of the week and I should get my January pay restored by Friday, Feb 11. It was not.

Today, just before Super Bowl halftime, my wife got an email from our credit union. DFAS sent the credit union an order to return my Dec 30 retired pay because they still think I died on Dec 25.

Tomorrow at 8 am I'll begin my 4th round of phone calls to DFAS and the benefits people, who continue to send "welcome to widowhood" and "your benefits have been canceled" letters to my wife. This will be my third round of phone calls AFTER i was told everything had been fixed.

I tell you, dying is just not worth the trouble.
 
Lewis Clark said:
So the sage continues ....

After speaking to the Defense Finance Center (DFAS) in mid-January, and having them tell me the situation was fixed at their end, I find the situation is getting worse.

DFAS did not pay my retired pay at the end of January, and they locked access to my online pay account. I spoke to them on Feb 7 and was told they could not act on the forms I faxed to them on Jan 19(!) because my signature was not readable enough on the fax to clearly tell if it was my signature. So naturally they did nothing. Nobody thought to tell me there was a problem ... and they do have my current contact information.

But on Feb 7 DFAS told me it should be fixed by the end of the week and I should get my January pay restored by Friday, Feb 11. It was not.

Today, just before Super Bowl halftime, my wife got an email from our credit union. DFAS sent the credit union an order to return my Dec 30 retired pay because they still think I died on Dec 25.

Tomorrow at 8 am I'll begin my 4th round of phone calls to DFAS and the benefits people, who continue to send "welcome to widowhood" and "your benefits have been canceled" letters to my wife. This will be my third round of phone calls AFTER i was told everything had been fixed.

I tell you, dying is just not worth the trouble.
Click to expand...


Since this is a federal agency, call you congressman on senators office, they have higher level channels to the DFAS
 
^ this ^ and get an attorney. That is awful to have happen. I hope it gets straightened out.
 
Last edited:
I was going to suggest congress person or Senator.
This is just ridiculous. They couldn’t read your signature.
My behind.
 
Ask your credit union to send a message/make a call that they just saw you ALIVE and WELL (and really pissed off) at one of their branches.
 
I haven't wanted to be too quick to ask a Congress person for help. But I will do so if this morning's round of phone calls doesn't end the situation.
 
Lewis Clark said:
I haven't wanted to be too quick to ask a Congress person for help. But I will do so if this morning's round of phone calls doesn't end the situation.
Click to expand...

When dealing with a frustrating issue with FIL and dealing with the VA we found out that congressfolks have full time staff who's function is to deal with navigating the federal bureaucracy for stuff like this. They have databases of phone numbers of people who:

A. Will answer the telephone
B. Actually know what they're doing
C. Can get it done

And in our case the nice lady:

D. Called back afterward to make sure everything was solved!

Hey, it's worth a try. The worst that can happen is they'll laugh at you. Because you know, you're dead.
 
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