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Mabel Mobry, still spry after surviving for exactly a century, pined for the days when she could get high with reckless abandon before all those Draconian blue laws gummed things up. When she was younger, she’d gone to Woodstock and heard Jimmy Hendrix play the national anthem. She relished her infamous pot parties, toking up and going straight to the bong, and getting a buzz. She’d married a man named Buzz, her third husband, as a way to immortalize those halcyon days, but he’d died in the bicentennial year, 1976, and that was a while ago. But now, in 2009, the pendulum was swinging back. Downtown and in the suburbs, marijuana was alive again, quasi-legal, if you used it for medical purposes. Stores sold it openly, if you had a prescription from a doctor. But Mabel was quite healthy for a centenarian. “I don’t feel a day over 94,” Mabel said to her cat, Woodstock, a white Angora that liked to party. What could she do to get her bong out again, a relatively law abiding old lady’s simple pleasure?  

Suddenly she had a brilliant idea, concerning her 2010 Medicare Advantage plan, the documents comprising it just sitting on the blue kitchen table getting dusty. Rock music started pounding in her head, Led Zeppelin playing some sort of anthem. She felt the freedom to act like Buzz’s warm caressing fingers remembered. He was her favorite husband when it came to physicality. Ring, once was all it took as her trusted California Health Insurance agent, a devout liberal thank God, picked up.

“Mrs. Mobry,” he said, sounding like a cherub although he had to be at least sixty, “What can I do you for?” A free spirit, the guy liked the freedom to juxtapose. He was humming the Star Spangled Banner, our national anthem. 

She came straight to the point. Woodstock was listening and nodded his approval. “Can my 2010 Medicare Advantage PPO plan incorporate a prescription for medical marijuana? Would such treatments be covered?”

“Do you have any medical conditions that might apply?” asked the cherubic California Health Insurance agent.

Mabel thought about it, but didn’t want to lie. “I might be going blue blind,” she said, shading the truth just a mite, as she could still see well enough to watch the Freedom Bowl parade on television, with its colorful anthem playing.

“That might do,” said the cherubic agent, “That just might do you.”

Dodger Stadium

Mickey Moosaka’s nephews and nieces were at their wit’s end. What activity would their cantankerous grand-uncle agree to participate in that the entire family might attend? He’d turned down bowling. “It reminds me of pinheads,” old Mickey said. He avoided restaurants. “Flies and their eggs on every plate,” he said, sickening anyone within earshot. Miniature golf emphasized the codger’s recently shrunken stature. “Don’t belittle me by taking me to a place like that,” he’d said to his thrifty niece Sappy in his rather squeaky Buster Brown voice. It was decided that “Uncle Mickey” would take in a Dodger game at the Stadium. Above all else, he enjoyed baseball, despite his consummate fears. He finally relented but warned, “I’ll probably get bonked by a foul ball off the bat of Manny Ramirez.” The geezer was a lifelong Dodger fan but had never been to a game in person.

The Moosakas got a nice row of boxes not far from home plate but well back in the upper deck. The seats seemed relatively safe. “These are great seats, huh Grumpa,” chirped twelve-year-old Matty to his beloved great-great-uncle. Matty was in his last year of Little League and played all-star caliber shortstop on a junior version of the resurgent Dodgers.

Fifty or sixty foul balls came and went, a few coming close, within a few rows, by the sixth inning, when the famous Dodger left fielder approached the batter’s box. “He’s going to conk me with a foul ball,” Mickey Moosaka predicted. The first pitch to Manny Ramirez was a fastball, which he took. The next two pitches were outside, so the count was 2-and-1 when the fateful pitch came. “This one hits me, I know it,” wailed old fearful Mickey. “No, it won’t,” said Sappy, fast becoming Mickey’s least favorite niece. “You worry too much.” But the next pitch, a curveball, was fouled back on an ominous trajectory. It seemed like the ball had eyes. Sure enough, it smacked old Mickey on the forehead with tremendous force, knocking him cold. Carried out of the ballgame on a stretcher, he was taken to the nearest hospital.

But Sappy was no sap. “Thank God we already had accidental coverage from a California Health Insurance agent,” she said. “It didn’t cost us a cent.”

“Thank God Grumpa Mickey didn’t die!” wailed Matty, placing priorities correctly.

“I guess,” Sappy was forced to agree.

Filling in the Medicare gaps can be tricky business for seniors, but it can be done with a little help from your California Health Insurance Agent.

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Esther Sirica, 68, was planning to have a surgery performed on her left foot’s hammertoe. She had joined a swim club for seniors and wanted to show off her feet. “I’d always wanted to be a foot model when I was younger,” she explained, “in my day; a well-turned ankle was just the beginning.”

But she wasn’t independently wealthy, and there were gaps in her Medicare coverage that she didn’t understand. “When I asked my primary care physician about the surgery, he said that I wouldn’t be covered. “It’s elective surgery on a pre-existing condition,” he asserted. But Esther wasn’t convinced. “Men used to find my feet lovely,” she told her physician, “except for THAT one.” She was pointing to her hammertoe, not the photo of President-elect Obama on the nearest wall.

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Esther quietly demurred amid the usual pleasantries, and begged her leave. A moment later she was off to find a second opinion. Her second opinion, an elderly physician who at least comprehended the surgery’s potential significance to the woman if not its urgency, did recommend the surgery, and perfunctorily checked out Esther’s Medicare coverage. “The surgery will cost $1,750,” he informed her.

“That’s not so much,” she said, assuming it was entirely covered except for her co-pays.

 “But Medicare will approve only about half of that, $825.00,” he added.

“Oh,” she said, with sadness suddenly re-encroaching upon her entire being, including the deformed toe.

Fortunately, Esther’s next visit was to her California health insurance agent, a valuable source for information on Medicare Supplement coverage for the past year or two. The nice young agent there had mentioned something called Medicare Supplement Insurance policies as a way to plug the disturbing Medigaps.

A month later, Esther was in the pool with the seniors, literally a new woman. A gentleman swimmer named Tony was looking at her foot when he noticed it. “Didn’t you used to have a hammertoe?” he remarked.

Esther Sirica flashed a big smile, her dentures clicking.

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Alfred was under the mistaken impression that Medicare was all he was entitled to, gaps and all. His California Health Insurance Agent Matt set him straight.

 Alfred H., age 104, lives in Escondido. He’s been blessed with relatively good health, although he fractured his hip while in an infantry unit, an imaginary one, when he fell out of his uncle’s pear tree, in 1918 when he was only 14.

 Alfred’s wife died in 1980, and occasionally his son Zeke, 73, stops by to visit. Zeke has had a succession of health issues, and retains Matt’s California Health Insurance Services, with Matt Lockard as his agent. Zeke has a Medicare Supplement Plan for 65+ seniors that serve his needs well. But Alfred has no agent and Original Medicare only witch is full of gaps. Suddenly, just in the past few months, his hip has been giving him trouble.

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 “I never saw you break your hip,” Zeke told his Dad, “did you take a fall recently?”

 “Nope,” Alfred said, “It happened before you were born.”

 “That sure isn’t recently,” Zeke agreed. “Are you going to have it fixed?”

 “Can’t,” Alfred said, “My Medicare will only pay for part of it. I went to see the doctor, he said I’d need surgery and the break is still there. In 90 years, it’s never completely healed.” 

 “It might get worse,” Zeke agreed, “you could end up like one of those old men and have to use a walker.”

 “I’m over 100 now, it’s too late. Medicare by itself is the best option for me.”

 “Why don’t you see my California health insurance agent, Matt Lockard?”

 Alfred drove over in his beloved Studebaker that still ran clean as a whistle. He spoke to Matt. Matt helped him understand how Medicare Supplement plans work.”

 The surgery was successful. For the first time in 50 years, Alfred called Lissie up on the phone. He’d known her from way back. “Do you want to go dancing?” he asked her.

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