The joys of the American healthcare system, pt 6 – mysterious bills from the beyond
For "cost containment", the health plan I'm on at work has farmed out their drug coverage to some internet pharmacy somewhere on the east coast. At first, it was just another stupid health card I had to carry around, which was annoying (the US$15 copay was more annoying, particularly since most of the drugs that float through the house cost < US$15), but then, also for "cost savings", the drug coverage required that we get all of our drugs through this internet pharmacy instead of through our local chemist.
Apparently "cost containment" has just been jacked up to a new level, which, according to the mysterious bill I just recieved, is "you pay us money for drug coverage, and we don't provide any drug coverage." This is a bill asking for ~US$100, in a bunch of amounts ranging from US$14 to US$40, with absolutely no explanation for the amounts listed.
Oh, and this internet pharmacy is on the east coast and it doesn't have a toll free WTF-F? number for people to call when they receive mysterious bills. So if I call them, it's my dime to figure out what drug they're on today?
Uh, no.
Needless to say, this comes at the same time my doctor wants to put me on some blood pressure medication because my blood pressure mysteriously went through the ceiling at the same time my sane corporate masters were fired and replaced by an, ahem, more elaborately coiffed lot. Now, even in the best of times I do not really want to have to resort to blood pressure medication to crank my blood pressure down now, because I want to keep some room for maneuvering if something goes badly wrong with my circulatory system and something has to be done right now™ to get my blood pressure down to the point where I don't generate 10 meter geysers when I get a nosebleed, but now that it looks like I might have to play the exciting game of "fight with the outsourced parasites" to get my health insurance to actually, um, pay for the services I'm paying them to provide I really really REALLY don't want to have to add additional medications to the pharmecutical house of horrors that American medicine wants my body to become.
I suppose I could always quit my job. It's not that I haven't done it before. But the previous times I'd quit my job the thrice-damned American healthcare system was somewhat less completely borked than it is now.
(And, for ObCanadian content: Apparently the so-called "Liberal" government in British Columbia has completely soured on socialised medicine and wants to sneak in American-style pay-for-no-service healthcare instead. British Columbia might be a lovely place aside from the pine blight and the nasty development blight that's spreading out from Vancouver like a particularly noisome fungus, but if I wanted American style healthcare, I'd just stay in the United States where I can get it, and torture, and discrimination *for free*. Perhaps Montréal instead? It's got a real winter (for now; global warming will put an end to that soon enough), mass transit, an electrified suburban railway, and it's the northern terminal of the PV&T.)
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BC Politics is as none other. The alleged “Liberal” Party was actually taken over wholesale by the thugs of Social Credit, aka full-goose loony righties, when Bill Vander Zalm’s escapades tarnished the SoCreds beyond repair - much like parasitic hairworms making grasshoppers jump in water so the worms can escape (horrific image here: http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7927). As a result, the landscape is BC Liberal = evil rightwingers, BC NDP = everyone left of center, and they fight for the swing voters who don’t know whether to choose Evil or, according to the MSM, Communism. It’s so nice to have an even-handed press.