Friday, January 23, 2009

I Love HMO! (sing to "I love Rock N' Roll" By Joan Jett)

I love my HMO
regularly deny stuff,
but want their dues NOW

Stevester's Adventure through the American Medical System

So I wanted to do a couple of things, namely change my medical insurance from Coventry (motto: "We don't fuck you in the ass as hard as Blue Cross at least, I mean am I right?") to GEHA, which is the government employee's health insurance. Since I work for the gub'ment I do not have to fill out a lot of the forms and shiznit you other skanks do, but I noticed on the parts I didn't have to fill out that the American public really takes it in the ass. Let me explain.

Apparently, in order to change your insurance, you have to have had a catastrophic life-changing and APPROVED event going on. You cannot change your insurance because it sucks or because another group gives you a lower rate. THis is not unlike peer pressure drug dealing, except these guys get your money before you get your paycheck and the drugs cost more and do less. Plus when they kidnap you you do not get your drugs for free, and none of the HMO guys wear cool clothes....I guess they're nothing like drug dealers. Oh well.

"But why the diatribe against the American Health care system Stevester? I'm Benson Hunter!" You might be saying if you really were Benson Hunter, which you aren't, so don't even joke like that.

Let me tell you a tale, a tale of daring, a tale of daring, of electric attraction, of primordial embarrassment, of the cold shrinking a wiener. I went to the doctor because I wanted to see about going from taking 4 shots a day (no not in my ass) to getting an insulin pump, because it offers more control over the diabetes which is apparently marauding over my pancreas and kidneys like an unstoppable rebel force.

HMO - 0, Stevester - 0

Round 1 - I walk into the doctor's office, which costs 30 dollars now. Fuck.

HMO - 1, Stevester - 0

Round 2 - After waiting for almost 30 minutes after my scheduled appointment, I am called back and weighed, listening to the "tsk tsk" of the nurse who is weighing me. "I ain't Missin' you " is playing on the radio in the background, and a doctor and nurse are trying unsuccessfully to tell who sings the song. I ashamedly inform them that it is John Waite, and that I own the album, to which the nurse, who couldn't be any older than 20, gives me this sad, sad look like "what a fucking loser" as she asks how old I am, and once she finds out I am thisclose to 30, informs me that she is 21. Fuck.

HMO - 2, Stevester - 0

Round 3 - My doctor walks in, I ask about the pump, she hands me an appointment card to see a specialist, informs me the pump is not covered by Coventry, and leaves. Total time actually speaking to a doctor - 1:02

HMO - 3, Stevester - 0

Round 4 - I go to the specialist, pay the 50 dollar entrance fee, and go back to wait. Since I was fasting, they take a urine sample and half my blood, then a midget punches me in the taint for good measure (I guess on a dude the taint is called the grundle, but I digress...) before the doctor walks in and asks me all the same questions he just had me fill out on a 12 page questionnaire, some while reading off what I had written. I instantly hate him.

He signs me up for a class to learn about how to use the pump and how to not be fat, and tells me to wait for his nurse. She walks in and informs me that since I just filled the cup with piss and they did not need it anymore, and since the lab that I needed to go to next was just "a few doors down", I could just take the cup with me and give it to them so that although they would still take blood, at least they wouldn't make me piss again. She gives me the room number and while checking my blood pressure at first awkwardly straddles my arm, so that my palm is nuzzling her camel toe. Nice.
So I leave the office, and find out the lab is on the other side of the hospital, and now I must walk down a bunc of full hallways carrying a cup of my own urine. On an aside, why the FUCK are hospital hallways so goddamn long? should I really need to be able to run a triathlon to make it from the shitter to the water fountain and then to the elevators? C'mon!

I get to the lab, and they inform me that Coventry will not cover their services, the only place that will is about 15 miles southeast of where I was. They hand me a map, the forms, and my cup of urine back, and send me on my way. In the elevator, a really hot asian chick gets on, kinda looks me over with a little smile like "hey, how YOU doin?" Then sees that I am holding a cup of what is obviously my own quickly chilling urine and moves away from me and doesn't make any more eye contact. Factor in the fact that my foot hurt from sparring the night before when I kicked someone and he brought his elbow down on top of my foot, bruising it terribly, and you have what looks like a crazy fat homeless guy. Fuck my life.

HMO - 4, Stevester - 0

Round 5 - I get to the other place, and walk in with my urine. Fuck this shit. I walk up to the desk and inform the lady I needed to get some labs done and that "I have both the forms and a cup of my own urine I have been carrying around all day", placing said cup on the counter right in front of a couple of old ladies, letting them revel in it's amber glow, hint of key lime pie and frothy textures. Fuck them! Feeling I was leaving in victory, I cracked a smile, only to have it wiped away when informed that Coventry would cover all but 15 dollars of the fucking lab work. Sheeeit!

HMO - 5, Stevester - $0

WHat kinda shitload of fuck is our medical system where a man must cart around a cup of his own fucking urine and still pay almost 100 dollars for the privelege? All I have to show for that day is 2 pamphlets on insulin pumps and a funny story to tell. How is it Cuba has universal health care and we do not? I briefly thought about moving to like France or something but they do not have NFL so fuck them.

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