Retiree Still on Hold With Medicare to Ask About $90 Rebate Already in His Bank Account

GREEN VALLEY, Ariz. — A 74-year-old retired insurance adjuster entered his second day on hold with 1-800-MEDICARE on Thursday, still waiting to ask a human being whether he qualifies for President Donald Trump’s one-time $90 Medicare Part B rebate, which landed in his checking account roughly 19 hours into the call.

“I’m not touching it until somebody tells me it’s mine,” said Lloyd Holdsworth, who has heard the same 14-second flute loop an estimated 4,900 times. “For all I know, it’s a test.”

His wife, Darlene, 71, showed him the deposit on her phone at 8:02 a.m. and has since served him two meals on a TV tray beside the wall jack. She noted that the $90 covers less than half of one month’s $202.90 premium, “which is about how much of Lloyd I’ve seen since Wednesday.”

The rebate goes to 20.8 million people in Original Medicare but not to the roughly 35 million in Medicare Advantage, a distinction Holdsworth has explained to the dishwasher repairman, a midterm canvasser and, twice, the flute.

Wanda Greensleeves, who moderates an online forum for hold-music enthusiasts, said the call already ranks fourth on the forum’s all-time list. “He hasn’t even reached the part where the flute comes back in a different key,” Greensleeves said. “Most men break there.”

Since payment-status questions go to Social Security starting Oct. 15, Holdsworth has set up a second phone, a rotary, on his other side. “Next Thursday I ask Social Security where the money is,” he said. “Then I ask Medicare whose it is. Then I spend it.”

As of this report, Darlene had read him the part about a letter from the President arriving in mid-October, and Holdsworth had asked her to find out whether he qualifies for that, too.