About a month ago I got a piece of mail at work from the Washington State Department of Social and Health Services.
No licensed professional likes getting unexpected missives from the state. DSHS doesn’t have much clout over veterinarians, so I was more puzzled than concerned, but still a faint sense of unease persisted.
That faint sense of unease blossomed into a full blown heart attack in an envelope when I pulled out and read:

Dear Margaret L. Hammond

The Health and Recovery Services Administration has received and reviewed your Medicaid Provider application.
We have decided not to enter into a Core Provider Agreement with you at this time. Washington Administrative Code 388-502-0030 (6) reads: “Nothing in this chapter obligates the department to enroll all eligible providers who request enrollment.”

If you have any questions, you can call me at……. etc.

Panic.
Immediate panic.
Insurance fraud, Medicaid fraud, identity theft. My blood pressure shot up so fast I was dizzy.

The only thing that provided any faint hope that I wasn’t permanently screwed was that my boss had gotten the same letter at the same time.
I was on the phone with the DSHS so fast my telephone smoked.
With really quite remarkable brevity for a governmental organization, to say nothing of a government phone tree, I was actually on the phone with a living human being to whom I could explain my dilemma before my 1:00 appointment showed up.
The DSHS guy to whom I spoke was bright and responsive. And very much seemed to understand my concern that SOMEone had tried to sign me up as a Washington State Medicaid Core Provider. An odd thing for a veterinarian to want, no?
The DSHS guy listened to my concern, agreed that it was more than a little weird and possibly a little ominous, then went to go ask someone whom I should talk to next.
DSHS guy came back to the phone and explained that he had spoken with his supervisor. These letters had gone out to the holders of all DEA numbers in Washington State that the DSHS had decided that they *didn’t* want as Medicaid Core Providers. The DEA numbers had been tagged in a database as early a 1995 as being “undesirable” as Medicaid Core Providers. The letters were getting sent out now because the computer system was being changed over and all of us with “undesirable” DEA numbers got flagged and brought up to the surface of the database again.
So no one tried to sign me up as a Medicaid Core Provider, my DEA number was still secure, all was copacetic.

We laughed at the nonsensical single mindedness of computer systems and I rang off to reassure my boss that her name, reputation, and DEA number were also secure.

Now keep in mind that each and every practicing veterinarian in Washington state that holds a federal DEA number got that letter. As well as a number of researchers, and other scientists with DEA numbers. Thousands of people across the state all calling the DSHS in Olympia in a panicked snit to find out who had been trying to use their name to sign up to receive Medicaid payments.
I felt sorry for the poor phone monkeys at the DSHS.

My sympathy for their computer system, however, failed rapidly when I got a second copy of the exact same letter ten minutes later. The first had come standard post. Outsized, the postage on the original was $0.65.
The second copy came special delivery, Certified Mail, signature required. For $5.30.
So because of what was essentially a computer glitch, the state spent $6.00 times who knows how many thousands of holders of “undesirable” DEA numbers across the state.

To steal a line from Bill Cosby, I told you that story to tell you this one.

A week or so ago I got a letter at home.
A big plastic window across the front shows my name, address, and the following:

SPECIAL NOTICE: You have been selected to represent Republican Voters in Washington’s 9th Congressional District. This is not a U.S. Government Document.

Um.
Wow.
I have?
Really?!
Opened the contents reveal themselves to be exactly what you’d suspect. It’s a questionnaire and fundraising campaign sponsored by the RNC. All sorts of conservative bloviating about President Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and the “liberal agenda”.
I haven’t yet decided whether I’ll send it back and make them pay the postage on their postage paid envelope (to say nothing of making someone read my nauseating liberal opinions on their desperately important questions), or if I’ll shred it and feed it into the worm bin thus getting at least *some* good out of the RNC.

But I have to wonder where, WHERE did they get my name? Does the RNC just carpet bomb with junk mail or did they get my name and address off of some mailing list that got purchased by someone who purchased it from someone who purchased it from someone?
And if so, WHO?!
The Funny Times? The dozens of organic gardening catalogues I receive? The mailing lists of my hippy feminist sports/activewear catalogues? I have absolutely no idea where they could have gotten my contact information.

Unless someone was listening to me rant about waste, fraud, and abuse when I realized that Washington State’s DSHS had spent $6.00 times several thousand to tell those of us with “undesirable” DEA numbers that we weren’t going to be Medicare Core Providers when we hadn’t been interested in doing so in the first place.