Ghosts

My dad died 7 years ago. At that time, we thought we knew about all the policies my dad had. A few years later, we discovered that he'd gotten some insurance, and my mom, not knowing, had paid for the policy for that number of years. We found out that they were unaware that he'd passed away when we got a letter from them asking for a death certificate FOUR YEARS after he was gone.

Today, it happened again. My mom's heart doctor's billing office called, and I found out that the insurance that my mom's been paying for for 7 years is NOT long-term care insurance, but Medicare supplemental insurance. She already has a supplemental insurance policy with a different company. Here's the kicker on that one: it's illegal to have two supplemental policies. You can have a secondary policy, but not two supplementals.

So, now comes the fun part. What the hell do we do? I have to go talk to my mom, and call the second company, and find out what we can do. The billing specialist said she didn't think my mom would get in trouble, because the main name on the policy is my dad's, and it went effective 3 days before he died. In case you don't know the time line, he had a stroke on May 22, 2001. He died June 4, 2001. I think, after my grandmother died on May 2, he decided to change policies, took care of it (and didn't tell my mom, because he took care of the bills), and then got sick and died before he could tell anyone. I'm hoping that maybe, just maybe, if there is no long-term care policy, that we can switch this to that, and there will be no harm, no foul. I don't know at this point.

Anybody out there have any ideas?