Zombie demands benefits

Aaaaah! A woman has apparently come back from the grave, and she wants Medicare benefits!

Margaret C. Morris and her insurance company now agree: She's alive.

Several months ago, her insurance company, Medicare or both dropped her coverage because they presumed the 95-year-old woman was dead.

"It's disgusting and it's irritating and it's frustrating, and if you can think of any other words, go ahead and use them," Morris said. "And I'm not dead. I'm not even close to it."

Morris' daughter, Margaret Spring, said the problem started when she fired her mother's hospice nurse. Spring thinks a hospice official checked the wrong box or typed in the wrong code when the agency was dismissed, making Medicare — and, later, her insurer — believe Morris was dead.

Okay, so my lead-in was a little misleading. She was never actually dead. That we know of, anyway.

But don't they usually require a death certificate before they declare that someone's dead? I know that when someone croaks and their family wants to collect on their life insurance, the insurance companies are pretty insistent about getting one of those. I guess they're a little less strict about that on the health insurance side.