No coronation (No Kings!)
May. 16th, 2026 08:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nosrednaydujMy dentist left her practice, and sold it to another dentist kind of abruptly, and that meant that when I had my checkup it was with a completely new set of people. It was a little weird; was in fact in the same building I did been going to, but I didn't recognize any of the people. Maybe I wouldn't have actually remembered all the front desk and other support staff.
The hygienist was great, and dentist seemed okay. But she found five problems in my mouth. This made me sad, because I'm about to lose my dental coverage. She wanted to do two fillings and a crown on one side of my mouth, and on the other side a crown and "just wait until it hurts and then we'll be doing an implant". So I thought that to get the best bang for my buck this month I should do the two fillings and the crown, even though she thought the other side crown was a little more pressing.
Then, when she actually went to remove the old filling and drill out the decay underneath, it did not look as bad as she had thought, so she was able to do just a filling. So much for my "bang for the buck". But, it means that I don't have to pay full freight for three fillings (there is a co-pay; they were about $125 each). Not sure what I'm going to do about the other crown; I might just pony up.
The lapse is because Ken didn't get his main grant from NSF, and there was a potential to tailgate onto somebody else's bigger grant, but that one's been delayed, so he's going to lose most of his salary starting June 1, and that makes the benefits go away. There's a minimum amount he has to bring in to qualify. Thank you DOGE. Ken is signing up for Medicare because it turns out that if you qualify for Medicare (which he will next month) then COBRA doesn't actually cover you, at least with the particular insurance contract that Tufts has. He had been hoping to do COBRA until the fall when the grant situation might be straightened out.
So I'm signing up for Medicare part B on the grounds that I have "qualifying event" of losing my coverage. There's some chance that my signup will run into a wrinkle, and hopefully that will not take too long to straighten out. I had them on the phone the other day and they said that if my application went through in June some time, they would cover it retroactively to June 1. I didn't ask them "what if it takes until September"; hoping that will not happen.
The hygienist was great, and dentist seemed okay. But she found five problems in my mouth. This made me sad, because I'm about to lose my dental coverage. She wanted to do two fillings and a crown on one side of my mouth, and on the other side a crown and "just wait until it hurts and then we'll be doing an implant". So I thought that to get the best bang for my buck this month I should do the two fillings and the crown, even though she thought the other side crown was a little more pressing.
Then, when she actually went to remove the old filling and drill out the decay underneath, it did not look as bad as she had thought, so she was able to do just a filling. So much for my "bang for the buck". But, it means that I don't have to pay full freight for three fillings (there is a co-pay; they were about $125 each). Not sure what I'm going to do about the other crown; I might just pony up.
The lapse is because Ken didn't get his main grant from NSF, and there was a potential to tailgate onto somebody else's bigger grant, but that one's been delayed, so he's going to lose most of his salary starting June 1, and that makes the benefits go away. There's a minimum amount he has to bring in to qualify. Thank you DOGE. Ken is signing up for Medicare because it turns out that if you qualify for Medicare (which he will next month) then COBRA doesn't actually cover you, at least with the particular insurance contract that Tufts has. He had been hoping to do COBRA until the fall when the grant situation might be straightened out.
So I'm signing up for Medicare part B on the grounds that I have "qualifying event" of losing my coverage. There's some chance that my signup will run into a wrinkle, and hopefully that will not take too long to straighten out. I had them on the phone the other day and they said that if my application went through in June some time, they would cover it retroactively to June 1. I didn't ask them "what if it takes until September"; hoping that will not happen.
