28 March 2008

the tragic state of health care in america, or, why i hate being a grown up sometimes.

Watch out-- this post will be filled with profanity. -M

Today I received a bill for 335.40 from University Health Care. For August 23rd of last year. When I still had decent benefits through Uncle Callison (my student insurance now is sketchy enough to make me a diligent partaker of my multivitamin and hope my appendix never bursts). Surprised, both at how quickly seven months can pass, and in extreme wonderment at how, after seven months, I was being fucking billed, I called their billing office, because um hello, this I cannot afford. I already spent that money on plane tickets for wedding fun and family reunionizing!

I don't have good experience with billing-- something similar to this happened in November over treatment I'd received in May and June and finally it was determined that it was nothing more than an unfightable case of my insurance just being assholes who don't want to fucking pay to have me tested because fuck, they might actually fucking have to pay to treat me. So I was defensive when I made my call today.

This defensiveness quickly melted into hysteria (blasted "hysterical woman" stereotype! I hate being that woman!) as I was told that my former asshole insurer had denied the claim not once, but four times, and finally UHC just gave up and sent me a bill. I told poor billing guy, over and over and over, but I was covered through the end of that month. I mean, fuck, what if my appendix had burst? What if the bill was for 8,000 dollars? Clearly I was being screwed. Finally the guy conceded that my former insurer had said that they didn't recognize my ID information and that I would have to call my former insurer. I would have to do the work because people specializing in medical billing can't fucking handle it. This is our health care system-- oh just charge the patient, they can assume the costs, we don't care how we get our money as long as we get it. That fucking attitude is destroying our country. When patient care-- the whole fucking purpose of going to the doctor-- is not the priority, our country is headed down the shithole fast.

Enraged, I hung up and tore into the black hole pit of hell that constitutes my filling system. Finally-- FINALLY-- I found the letter from my former insurer stating I was indeed covered and called their asses. You know what they told me? Oh, it's because they were filing with former insurance Utah, not Washington. It means they had your prefix wrong. Three little letters on my insurance card that the billing people didn't catch. Of course our system didn't recognize you. Our records don't even show they tried making a claim, the nice girl said.

So I called UHC and the guy had his tail between his legs as I told him how his fucking system that he should understand works, and hopefully I won't get billed for it.

But here's what makes me mad. If you don't know what questions to ask-- if all you did was go to the doctor and that's all you really understand about the situation-- then the system makes you pay. The healthcare system in this country privileges not only the people who can pay for it, but also the people who know how to negotiate it, the people who can articulate their needs or concerns or problems to ensure they don't get fucked over. Honestly, this is the kind of shit that gives me heartburn, I'm choking down berry-flavored Tums like skittles right now because it gives me reflux that everything-- fucking everything in this fucking country-- seems to come back to some kind of privilege. Whether I got the job with insurance because I'm white or because I was a woman or whether that guy didn't take me seriously because I'm a woman or because my class has put me in a position to get higher education so I can have the linguistic skills to deal with the bureaucracy-- it's all dependent on some kind of privilege. And that makes me so angry because it seems to me that healthcare shouldn't be privileged. In a country with as much abundance, with such an exceptionally high standard of living, it seems to me that access to healthcare should be a right extended to all Americans. And that my friends, is why I will support a Democrat in November, because this shit can't be tolerated any longer.

*end rant*

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