Big Apple Oranges – The resource for NYC special needs children and their families

All agencies that provide Medicaid reimbursement are pretty awful. Some of just worse than others.

You have to submit original receipts with your request but then you never know if the agency received the documents. So you call and get shuttled around the agency until you are told that they will evaluate your application within 3-6 months, depending on when during the fiscal year you sent it.

But it really takes 6-9 months before, after repeated calls and emails, you find out whether you have been approved for reimbursement. If you have, they give you an idea of when the check will be mailed. Add another few months on to that. If they reject your claim, they either lose your original receipts, or return them too late to apply elsewhere.

Some system we've got….

It's early morning and I am waiting for the school bus to take my son to summer school. And I continue to wait  and wait. So I call the matron of the bus who tells me that she was about to call me. A student jumped out the back emergency door and the police were taking statements. So she didn't know when they'd be by to pick up my son. She was real casual about this, as if this was a normal occurrence. Turns out, it was.

So I drove my son to school and spoke with someone in administration. "Oh," she replied, "he does this all the time. He hates the bus." WHAT!!!!

"Does he have a transportation para?" I asked. "Yes"

WHERE'S THE PARA!@#$%??????? What was she doing while the child under her care was racing out the back door? This child could get hurt – or hurt someone – and he needs a para that puts him in the front of the bus, away from the back door (duh!), in the window seat (duh!), and watches over him to make sure he doesn't make a run for the back of the bus. There is danger, and delay, for the other bussed children as well.

So, the cops found him in the park, and he's back on the bus – with a bigger para this time. And I feel as comfortable with this arrangement as an egg on a wall……………..