I’M HEARING YOU

82-yr.-old can’t get insurance to listen

Dear John: I am 82 years old and need a hearing aid.

I have Medicare, Empire-Blue and GHI/Emblem insurance. The hearing aid is $2,400.

None of these companies will give me a penny. Any advice or help? P.M.

Dear P.M.: Hearing aids are a very complicated matter.

You should contact Sally Kweskin at Empire (2124761421), and she will get to the bottom of it.

As best I can figure it out: (1) Medicare won’t cover it. (2) Emblem can’t cover it, because Medicare doesn’t. (3) But Empire might cover it if you have a Medicare Advantage plan. Kweskin will figure it out, and then I’d like you to tell me what the determination was.

She will need more details than you provided me, as you can see from her note that I sent you. And she needs you to sign the release that she attached.

Let me know how it goes.

Readers: Back in July I revisited the story of a student supply trainee with the US General Services Administration who said she was fired because she blew the whistle on wrongdoing.

At that time, her case was under review by the GSA’s Merit Systems Protection Board, and this worker, whom I identified only as M.G. in the previous col umn, was still awaiting a verdict from the judge.

The case had been under review since last November, and M.G. — whose name is Michelle Garcia — was being forced to sell her house because of the firing.

I spoke with the GSA to see if the case could be moved along faster. They pretty much told me to mind my own business.

This is what I wrote in July: “First, I’m putting your letter in the paper to embarrass the GSA New York region — even though I doubt this federal agency has a conscience. Maybe this’ll light a fire under the judge.

“And, second, I can ask my readers if anyone has a job that you can fill until the GSA takes you back.”

Well, Michelle told me last week that the judge ruled in her favor and that she will get her job back — unless the GSA appeals the ruling. Unfortunately, she still has to sell the house.

Will it be appealed? The GSA told me it hasn’t decided yet.

The case is important because, as anyone who reads my column knows, protection for whistleblowers is important if we want to clean up government.

Congress is supposed to protect them. And the laws are on their side. But that doesn’t mean that some manager who’s been misbehaving won’t take it upon himself to get rid of someone who won’t go along with the wrongdoing. And once that person is fired — as Michelle was — it takes a lot to get the action undone and the whistleblower’s life repaired.

Michelle eventually got a lawyer involved. And some politicians weighed in on her side as well. So I’m not sure how much being embarrassed in this col umn counted toward getting this case sped up.

But, hey, the way I figured it, being in The Post didn’t hurt.

I’ll let you know what the GSA does next. I hope it’ll spend more time cleaning up its dirty linen than leaving a whistleblower out to dry.