Melissa Bean Staffer Nicholas Jordan Trashed by Constituents’ Son

A Melissa Bean story popped up on my screen yesterday. I don’t check out all of them, but this link led to OpEdNews.com.

The post was an article by John Olsen entitled,

Olsen tells of contacting caseworker Nicholas Jordan, Bean’s Director of Constituent Services, in 2005 “on behalf of his stepfather and now deceased mother.”

Olsen conveyed a complaint with a managed care provider with lots of documentation. He claims that showed the Medicare provider circumvented numerous federal regulations.

I know how I would have handled the inquiry. Not being an expert in such regulations, I would have sent the information to the Inspector General of the Department of Health and Human Services.

Here’s a sample paragraph (turned into more than one paragraph so you can read it easier):

“Jordan eventually mailed a ‘letter of inquiry’ regarding the issue, but:

  • He mailed it to the wrong place, AdminiStar Federal, a company that has a contract with the Federal government to oversee the policies of beneficiaries enrolled directly in Medicare
  • He misidentified the issue.
  • He failed to provide us with the ‘answers’ that he claimed to have received.

“Jordan had told me that he was going to send a letter to AdminiStar Federal.

“I then had advised Jordan that instead he should direct any correspondence to Matthew Brown, who at that time was the CMS Congressional Liaison in Washington.

“I explained to him that my stepfather and my mother were Medicare + Choice [now Medicare Advantage] beneficiaries, and CMS itself oversees those policies.

“Jordan chose to ignore me.

“Jordan misidentified the issue as being about the quality of ‘health care’ that had been delivered.

“It is difficult to understand how Jordan made this error, because I had repeatedly told him that the issue was that Federal regulations had been violated.

“Bean is not a doctor, and I did not ask her office to become involved in a medical issue.”

After an unsatisfactory discussion with Jordan, on June 30, 2005, Olsen called John Gonzalez, Bean’s Chief of Staff. He promised to call back by the 4th of July.

He didn’t.

Olsen suggests Bean be held accountable.

I’m not going to suggest that a caseworker can be on the top of his or her game 100% of the time, but even only hearing one side of the story, Bean’s office seems to have had room for improvement.


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