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First, an AIDS hotline update. As many of you may know, my girlfriend Claire still works for the AIDS hotline, and so I still get to hear about all the goings-on at my old job. This week the big news is that somehow the hotline phone number was put into a directory as being the statewide Medicaid hotline number. The result, of course, has been a flood of people calling in search of Medicaid information. The only Medicaid information anyone at the AIDS hotline has is that AIDS patients sometimes qualify for Medicaid, and how to apply. As you can imagine, Claire and everyone else have been pulling their hair out over this. While that is an extreme example, things like it happen all the time on hotlines. One example at my new job is that the Medicare hotline gives out our phone number to people on Medicare who need supplemental insurance. The problem with that is that we're only able to help people over 60, so the people receiving Medicare who are disabled and under 60 end up getting the runaround. I've contacted them to let them know about this mistake, but the calls keep coming. This week has been especially bad. A pharmaceutical distributor recently settled a class-action lawsuit in Louisiana, which will result in local senior citizens who qualify receiving free medication. The key phrase here is "who qualify." Local TV news has been leaving that part out, and then adding "For more information, call the elder helpline..." They're also not reporting that people who qualify will be informed by mail within several weeks. Naturally, everyone who hears "Free drugs" wants to get in on it, and so the first thing anyone does is call the number at the bottom of their screen -- my number. Oh well. It keeps the job interesting.
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