Naturalized and adopted citizens and Medicare/Social Security - the SSN class trap and a likely SSA software process failure

TLDR;

1. If you are a US citizen by naturalization or adoption you should check (call SSA and wait on phone for 1-2 hours) that your SSN is classified as US Citizen. The reclassification of an existing SSN has been an issue for over 40 years. If it is not correctly classified you will run into problems when you start Medicare or Social Security coverage (which can be at different times).
2. I think the rats nest of issues I ran into getting Medicare coverage arose because SSA software automates routine processes but it doesn't cover this problem. AND there isn't an effective process to manage exceptions to the automation rules.

Story

One of the joys of Oldness includes obligatory encounters with overwhelmed government services, not least the Social Security Administration. Recently I fought my way past the usual array of minor bugs and UI issues and browser incompatibilities to register for Medicare 8 weeks before my 65th birthday around May 30 2024.. I believe it was on the first day that I was eligible to start the process online.

That's where it went bad. After completing the application the screen briefly showed a confusing message about needing to submit some sort of additional documents -- but not which documents. I also got an email dated 6/3/24 saying to expect instructions. I waited ... and nothing happened. My online application status indicator stayed at the start of step II.

I checked the online status many times over the following weeks but nothing turned up. I finally phoned SSA and after about 1-2hours of waiting I got someone who started to work the problem. Somewhere during this process my line was disconnected. SSA staff don't have a way to call back or reach anyone who is disconnected.

After a week or two I were getting closer to my birthday and I forced myself to phone again. This time after 1-2 hours I was told to bring my naturalization certificate and state ID to our local SSA office.  I was later told this advice was wrong for my situation -- in fact they needed my passport and state ID. (I suspect two government approved IDs and my naturalization papers and birth certificate might have worked if I didn't have a passport.)

In the aftermath of the CrowdStrike fiasco I waited 3.5 hours in the local SSA office until I finally reached a very pleasant expert who looked at my passport and state ID, explained that my SSN classification was wrong, and passed on the correction to the one person who could process it. Somehow that happened the same day -- so I think she made an extra effort.

The SSN conversion thing is a problem -- two our children were born in Korea and both got caught out by this. SSA being overwhelmed is a problem too -- not everyone can spend hours and hours waiting on the phone or at the SSA office.

But the interesting problem to me is that I only received one of two emails that I was told were supposed to have been sent to me and neither of the two paper letters that were supposed to have been sent. In addition the description of the problem I saw in the original online submission form was incomplete and only showed there. 

I'm sure SSA believes I missed the 2nd email and that I threw out both SSA letters. The latter is especially unlikely; we have two special needs children and Emily does NOT miss SSA letters. It's a life, death, and taxes class thing.

That's what SSA would believe, but I think the letters were never mailed and the 2nd email was never generated. That what's would happen if the business logic in SSA automation didn't have a specific response to the SSN classification problem AND didn't have a good process for "problems not elsewhere classified". That would also explain the incomplete or misleading instructions my second phone rep passed on to me. It might even explain why the first phone rep might have dropped my call (lest she fall infinitely far behind).

I wasted a lot of hours dealing with this, and so did SSA staff. I worked for years with government software so I'm not optimistic this will get fixed; I suspect "edge cases" will be falling off the SSA process for decades to come. But I did write our state representative's office, so maybe the summer student will find a way to pass on the speculative bug report.