It's open season
I have the answer you have been looking for.
I am settled into the loveseat for the afternoon when Steve comes into the room with THAT LOOK. You know that look.
“Hey babe…” he says. I can almost see the elipses.
“Yeah…” I answer looking up through my stubby eyelashes.
Then he pulls the laptop from behind his back.
“No.” “No no no.”
That tone, that look, that laptop. It is time for us to come together for either taxes or Health Care Insurance decisions. Its November. We filed out taxes just last month (cause extensions aren’t just for hair anymore.) So. Healthcare.
“But we just switched.” When Steve started his new job for the “man” (I won’t change that gendered word because government for worse or for worse is still a quagmire of mandom) we got switched from “Blue Cross most-things-are-fine” to “Blue Cross you-idiots-don’t-get-it-anyways” (MTAF and YIDGIA)
“Yes, but it is open season and this is our one chance for the entire year not to bleed out in the street or bleed out our bank accounts.”
He reaches for the glass table where I have stashed my laptop. This is a TWO laptop project.
“I will put on the tea. And it will be CAFFEINATED.”
It is a mostly ignored fact that Steve has gone to business school so now his spreadsheets have (some) dollar signs in them. This scares me.
I have the 87 tabs open and am inputting generic names of the meds we are on.
“We don’t need to compare the prescription prices. They are all fine. Except the ones that aren’t covered which are $900 a month.” (please note many numbers in this post are exaggerated. That one is not.”
“Yes. But we have 17 prescriptions (and counting) so even a $10 difference per prescription per month might matter.” By like…here I pull out my phone and do some complicated math 10x17x12= $2040/ year for infinite years.”
“Rounding error” he mutters.
Never the less I persist.
He is looking up our MDs and specialists of which we have 18. (It turns out the only exaggeration yet is the number of tabs open on my computer.) “Looks like most of them are in-network for all of the Blue bullshit options.”
“yes, but these five are changing next year.” “Do you have the new names?” “no.” Not subtle eye roll.
I have an email out to one of our regular chemists and she gets back to me in minutes. She has two of my other emails in the ether but I am going to pretend that she isn’t ignoring my medical questions and answering my payment questions. Even though she is.
Her response reads: “Cigna.”
“Cigna.” I tell Steve
“Cigna? We don’t even have Cigna on here.”
He tilts his laptop towards me. My vision is bad and the weird black tinted covering that keeps secrets from abutting plane passengers makes it tough to read but I can see the columns. There are lots and lots (and lots) of columns.
“none of those are Cigna.”
“not one.”
He adds a column. I add a tab. “Actually before I start can I refill your tea?”
“No.” He stands up and gets a tumbler from the tray and pours a few fingers of gold liquid into it. “Thank you though.”
Forty minutes later we have estimated urgent care and well care visits, blood work and MRIs, Cat scans and colonoscopies, minor and major surgeries, cells are being filled as quickly as mugs.
“A lot of variables here.” He says to himself.
“Oh, I know.” I am hiding my phone at my side playing spelling bee while he continues tongue between his teeth.
The answers to his equations aren’t pleasing him.
“I think we need help.” I say.
“There IS NO HELP.” he answers with crazy eyes.
“It’s OK babe. We will just do the best we can. Let’s look at it tomorrow. I have time after the dermatologist and allergist.”
“The ALLERGIST. I FORGOT THE ALLERGIST.”
“That’s Ok. It’s ok.”
“no. NO.”
“It’s weird…I thought government health care was going to be great. I thought they had something special and easy.” It might have been one of the most naive things I have ever said. Government. Easy?
But it has set Steve off in another direction.
He is copying each row and tagging the name with “federal” Each of these providers DOES have a federal plan. It is like when I discover and -ed or an -ing when working on the spelling bee. It offers possibilities, more solution and also more work. His fingers are flying. He is a maniac. I don’t recognize him. I glance down quickly at my game. There IS an -ed. What has all of this practice been for if I can miss something this simple.
He is hissing to himself “delta” “I thought delta was a dental plan…” He looks up at me. He has married someone he can’t recognoize. “No, like change. Delta X, change in X, I am re-writing the function for the specialist column.”
“Sweetie… how many plans are you looking at now”
“Twenty.”
I have an idea.
I head up the stairs.
“Where are you going?” Steve calls after me.”Not to bed? We aren’t done!” It is full dark, we haven’t eaten. We haven’t seen our kid.
I knock on his door. “We need your help.”
He swivels towards me, behind his touseled head his screen looks like Steve’s. “I’m studying for AP calc, can it wait?”
“Calculus…Steve is calling from downstairs…what a good idea.”
I have a different idea.
I hand L a sharp object.
“Let it fly.”
L raises his eyebrows but takes the dart and flicks it across the room. It lands cleanly in wedge 17.
“Plan number 17” I tell Steve, pulling his laptop gently from his hands when I return to the living room. “Which one is that?”
“It’s blue basic standard covers most things with high out of paycheck and with low deductible and low family max. Oh wait its blue basic standard federal.”
“Why is it called basic if it covers a lot?”
“Why is the large at Starbucks a small?”
Fair enough.
“Let’s pick that one.” I say.
“That was EXACTLY what my numbers said. Except they equally pointed to Anthem gold overpay questionable specialists and No name frighteningly zero out of pocket covers pre-existing conditions and can’t be real.”
“Lets skip the imaginary plan and go for small large basic special.”
“Why do you think it is best?” He asks. Glass empty, eyes full of hope.
“L helped me, he is working on multivariable equations.”
“Right. Very good.”
Steve is nodding. I shut the lid of his laptop.
The next morning I am feeding the cats when Steve comes into the kitchen with a certain look. “Hey babe? I was thinking…” “yeah?” I ask. “I couldn’t sleep last night. We can only choose once a year. Let’s run the numbers on the Chicken swan thing again.”
I grab the whisky and pour a slug into the coffee.
On a scale of root canal to basement cleaning how shitty is it to pick a healthcare plan?
This is very funny! Except it's not. We have no health care "system", and no insurance "system" either. One of the many ways in which our country is ensnared by the myth of the market and citizens as consumers. Hope the dart hits a bulls-eye.
Lordt. That all read like Charlie Brown's teacher, "Whah, whah, whah..." LOL It's posts like this that make me want to move to Costa Rica. Or, y'know, any OTHER country that has better healthcare system than we do.