Random DMV Ridiculosity

Tangent time! This is not about health insurance but its sinister-and-evil cousin, the DMV.

I got married + I am a woman = I am trying to change my last name. The DMV decided that it did not like this idea. Apparently, you need a driver's license with your name on it if you are to be taken seriously these days.

On October 19th, 2010, I went to the DMV with my new social security card and my marriage license, and successfully applied for a new driver's license with my married name on it. They issued me a temporary license, punched a big hole in my current license to invalidate it, and forced me to carry around my passport in the hopes of garnering booze without fuss.

On January 5th, 2011 (I still had no new license), I went on an out-of-state job interview. The company with which I was interviewing had reserved a rental car for me to drive around. Unfortunately, and unbeknownst to me, my temporary license had expired on December 17th, 2010. Taxi it is, then!

I went to the DMV a few days later to renew my temporary license, and they informed me that my license had been mailed on December 23rd, 2010 (mind you, this is a week after my temporary one expired). It was now January 7th, two weeks after they had "mailed" it. They told me to be patient.

:-/

Anyway, today is January 28th, 2011, and more than a month has passed since the "mailing" date and the DMV repetitively telling me to be patient. [Sidenote: It is nearly impossible to get a customer service representative from the DMV on the phone from their crazy phone tree madhouse. Their selections on the phone tree are vocally based, so if you just mumble nonsense into the phone at least 3-4 times, the automated system gets frustrated and sends you to a live person. Bingo!] I called the DMV, and after being on hold for more than 30 minutes they informed me that my license had been returned by the post office, so I had to call some other weird department in Sacramento where it was being held. After calling multiple times and hearing their busy signal, I finally got through and was told that I needed to be certified to receive confidential mail.

???

The DMV dude told me I needed to contact the postmaster (WTF?) to sort this out, or make sure my name was on my lease agreement. My name is on my lease agreement...with my maiden name. Apparently because my new license with my new name does not match my maiden name on my lease agreement, the USPS (in cahoots with the DMV, for sure), decided to hold my license hostage. What makes this so much better is that I tried changing my name on my lease agreement but was told that they needed to see my new driver's license to change it.

Just to sum up...I need my new driver's license to change my name on my lease, which I can't change until I get my license. Sweet. How does this not happen to more people? Don't other people get married and change their names ever? No? Anybody?!?!

This is my plan of attack: 1) I have called the post office trying to figure out how the hell to contact this supposed postmaster. They have informed me they will call me back on Monday (today is Friday). 2) Take my new social security card, my old driver's license, my passport, my marriage certificate, and some crisp Benjamins to the lease office at my apartment complex in an effort to make them change my name to MY NAME. We'll see what happens. I'm going to eat a strawberry cupcake right now.

One Sad Puppy

A trip to the pathology lab is my favorite thing ever...and then I woke up.

Amidst the hubbub of unpaid claims and antagonistic rejections on the part of Blue Shield, I thought that this little claim from the pathology lab had merely slipped through the cracks (as aforementioned in the previous post). I had been sent to Westcliff Labs by my specialist to get some samples taken. Apparently, and this is no joke: IT IS THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE PATIENT TO KNOW WHICH PATHOLOGY LABS THEIR INSURANCE COVERS, NOT THE DOCTORS/OFFICES THAT DEAL WITH THESE SITUATIONS ON A DAILY BASIS. Lovely.

So, if you couldn't gather by by rude capitalizitude, Westcliff was not covered by United Healthcare (since I didn't have their stupid referral) nor was it covered by Blue Shield. So why did the doctor send me here AFTER asking me what insurance I had? Because not sending me here would have made sense.

Luckily, the bill was small, but I ultimately lost this battle (and $90) since there was no way to dispute it other than to say I was really sad, like the puppy in this picture. That didn't work.

PS - Just to add to the fun, the pathology lab messed up my results because they stored my samples improperly and were unable to analyze them. They told the doctor this, but not me. The doctor never called me either. After waiting for a few weeks and becoming impatient to hear my results, I called up the doctor's office and they informed me that I had to go back to the pathology lab again (were they ever going to tell me this??). Luckily, this one was on the house!