Let me tell you a story about a customer that I had years ago, that to this day reminds me of why I do what I do. Several years ago I had a customer (we will call her Jane), who had requested more information about Medicare plans that were offered in her area. She lived in the beautiful state of Florida, which from what I understand holds the second greatest number of state retirees in the nation. The initial reasoning for her request had to do with the interest of getting more dental and vision coverage, because she needed to have some dental work done that would be expensive without coverage and a new pair of eye glasses.

During our conversation She had expressed to me that over the coarse of the last 7 months she had fallen in to the “coverage gap” or the “donut hole” for her medication, and she hadn’t been able to afford her medications. This was very dangerous because she was an insulin diabetic, had a heart condition, and was being treated for High Blood Pressure. She further explained to me that she was having issue with her balance, had become very light headed on a regular basis, and felt faint a lot of the time. When she told me this I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. This pour woman was having to endure all sorts of struggle with her health because she wasn’t able to afford her medications, and no one had done anything about it to try and help her! I immediately placed the wants of dental and vision aside temporarily while I tried to help with the more serious issues at hand. I began to ask her questions surrounding the possibility of getting assistance with her meds, coming up with a game plan to make her doctor aware of what she is experiencing, and getting a better understanding of what medications she needed more help with.

After covering all of these topics we found that there was a possibility that she may qualify for additional assistance through a Low Income Subsidy, that would help to reduce the cost of her medications. I helped her apply for the coverage, and after doing so was able to help her find a plan that would save her on some of the copays her plan had and increase her coverage for dental and vision. I told her that in the next 2 weeks she should be getting a letter of either approval or denial from Social Security, and that I would call her back around that time to check on her and see what they said. Low and behold she ends up calling me a week and a half later explaining to me that she received a letter in the mail from Social Security and didn’t understand what it was saying. So I had her read the letter to me and it was explaining that she qualified for Extra Help with her medications. This benefit was going to reduce the cost of her medication to only 15% of the total cost, which was going to be more than affordable for her. She began to start crying on the phone, thanking me so much for helping her be able to take her medications again so she didn’t have to feel the way she did. She kept saying that she only requested to speak to someone to get more coverage for dental and vision, and now she felt like her life had been saved. To sum up this story, this is why I do what I do. There are countless seniors out there that are hurting, need access to benefits they don’t know they currently are eligible for, and who need more adequate coverage than they have now.