Someone deserves to take the blame for my latest round of stress that's been caused by my medical care, but I don't know who should catch the brunt of my angst. I've identified the possible offenders, easily enough: my battery of doctors, my insurance company, my local CVS, and my current company. While each one of these people, places, and things claim to care about my wellbeing, the combination of them has started to make me realize that there might be some wisdom in chucking it all for a good dose of Windex, the all-powerful cure all.

I first feel that I need to slap around my daytime employer. Not only do they inject me with an enormous amount of stress everyday - just by staying in business - but they also tend to fuck with my medical insurance. I started with a really great insurance company that offered a low copay and few medical hurtles. Citing that "we need a better plan" my employer switched to some mutli-state conglomerate that offered a moderate copay and a higher monthly payment. This wouldn't have been as bad if this more expensive but less effective plan wasn't pitched as a better policy; that just insults my intelligence. As if that wasn't bad enough, a few months ago, we change policies again, but stayed with the same lame company: the copay doubled this time as did the monthly payment. Indeed, my employer has definitely fucked me.

The current medical insurance company has done it's best to fuck me, too. When we switched to this latest medical policy, I'm told that we had to change dental insurance at the same time - or so my employer tells me... this might have been their own company's decision but they blame the insurance company so it's a moot issue. For dental coverage, I'm allowed to let my dentist clean my teeth from time to time and have some random things fixed if they are broken. However, instead of the insurance company dealing with the dentist, I'm now required to pay my dentist and the insurance company sends me a check with whatever they feel like covering. That's hardly fun, but that's not all. You see, this new insurance policy has a couple of other changes... the prescription plan that is included is also a little screwy now. They give you a five day window to refill 'scripts. If you try to get them refilled before the window, the insurance won't cover it. More on that in a minute, because ordinarily I wouldn't have a problem with this, but now it's time to get the doctors involved.

Due to newly discovered random allergies, slight asthma, and hereditary impacted high cholesterol, my doctors have prescribed for me about six different medications, two of which are taken daily. The other four are either seasonal or for emergency use. OK, if they say they're required I'm OK with this: I'm to the point where I'd rather take the medication than feel like crap, so I'm content to take the meds. My asthma doctor has been good about this - his 'scripts can be refilled for a year without any additional authorization. My other doctors have given me a maximum of 3 refills before authorization is required. Um, hello? Since when is there a black market for a month's supply of Zyrtec?! How does it hurt me to have more refills available, especially when my doctors and pharmacy don't cooperate for these short term authorizations?

Which brings us to CVS. CVS is so fast to collect their money that they've made four voids because of me already. I mean first you have to wait for someone to get freed up to come to the counter which can take up to fifteen minutes; it might take longer but after the first fifteen minutes I leave the place before I require a free sample of Valium. Assuming I get to the counter, one out of every two refills brings me to either a) we're waiting for a doctor to call back or b) that will be $145, meaning that the insurance didn't cover the refill, and the next in an endless chain of register voids. And that's where the insurance company comes back into the picture: you can only call in for a refill when you have about five pills left. Of course, if an authorization is required, this leaves a 12 minute margin of error before the cycle of medication is fucked. At least the CVS crew is polite about all of these things - my local store has been great when dealing with these little problems and have gone out of their way to help me out on occasion... I just wish there were fewer problems or at least less of a wait.

So... who gets the blame for this massive pooch-screw? I can't decide. What I do know is that I feel like I've been given an unexpected prostate exam with a tool that's the size of small domestic car.
I even
asked my boss if I could be put on unemployment because the state offered medical coverage for the unemployed worker has to offer better benefits than our current plan... he only got pissed at me and threw me outta his office... bluh.

Of course, unexpected prostate exams won't be covered by my insurance plan, so I'll have to pay extra for that too!