My Insurance Company Wants Me To Be Dead

I am your insurance company's worst nightmare. On the surface I'm ideal. I'm thirty years old, so I am past my reckless "I got drunk and fell down and broke my leg" phase. I'm also not married, so there probably won't be any costly babies or dependents to add to my policy any time soon. And frankly, I should be in the prime of my health. That is the rub. My health is nothing short of calamitous. I'm a marvel of modern medical maladies. I've got no less than three doctors' phone numbers on speed dial, and I can comment with expertise on the relative merits of at least half the emergency rooms in the region. If there is something sticking out where it shouldn't be, I will trip over it. I will find the one carpet tack in your entire apartment to step on, and it will get infected. And you know those genetic booby traps you read about in magazines? The ones that lie in wait in your DNA, watching for the opportunity to kill you? Yeah, I got those. All of them. What can I say? I got problems. And MAMSI, my insurance company, wishes I would just fucking die already and save everyone a lot of paperwork and money.

Outside of my typical mishaps (car wrecks, freak sports injuries, obscure syndromes, etc), I have one big problem that haunts my medical records: Cancer. Not a nice, tidy little "We're just going to cut this one nut off and you're good to go" type of cancer. No, I've got the kind of cancer you whisper about, the kind that kills children.

My cancer is not cheap. I'd be in serious trouble without my medical insurance. My medication alone is almost six thousand dollars a month. Of course that's retail. Mr. Bush, tell me again why I can't import drugs from Canada? Oh that's right, your buddies at the pharms give you fat campaign contributions. My bad. Where was I? Right, expensive.

I have no doubt that insurance companies put cases like mine into a cost/benefit analysis to determine the way they will handle me. I am cutting into their profit margins in the worst way possible. I'm one of those cases that gets put into a file and 'reviewed' every so often to look for cost savings. MAMSI is particularly bad. They look for every opportunity possible to deny coverage. Highlights:

-At least every other month I arrive at the pharmacy to find that my medication isn't covered. They need proof of condition, or a letter from my doctor, or an act of Congress- anything to avoid paying. Once I picked up my medication at Giant and the woman said, "That will be fifty seven eight one." And I said, "Wow, they raised my co-pay?" And she said, "No, that will be five thousand seven hundred eighty-one dollars." Like I have that kind of cash on me. "Do you want that in twenties?"

-Because my medicine is so expensive, they are very strict about how often they disperse it. I can only get it every thirty days. So I have to go to the pharmacy on the day it runs out. I guess this is to prevent me from hoarding it and selling it to the few thousand other poor bastards that are unlucky enough to have my form of cancer, the rarest in it's 'family' and the only one treatable with my medication.

-I have to constantly prove that I have had continuous coverage. By Federal law, insurance companies cannot deny coverage for a pre-existing condition as long as the insured has had continuous insurance coverage. They pull this one all the time. I get a threatening letter that says they're not going to pay for doctor visits because I haven't proved that I'm covered. I keep my letters proving I'm covered on file. I don't fall for that one anymore.

-At some point I will probably need a bone marrow transplant. The place to get this done is the Hutch in Seattle, the undisputed industry leader. The procedure is inherently dangerous (75% survival rate, best case scenario), and even more dangerous in hospitals where the procedure is not performed regularly (<25% survival rate). None of my insurance companies have ever authorized a trip to the Hutch. They want me to get it done at Hopkins. The doctor at Hopkins told me, on no uncertain terms, that I will die if I have the procedure there. This is immaterial to the insurance companies. They won't pay to have the procedure in Seattle, even if I put up all travel expenses and other costs associated with the trip. Why? They've cut a deal with Hopkins, of course.

The bottom line is that they'd get rid of me in a heartbeat if they could. I'm a problem case. But I'm not going anywhere and I'm playing by the rules. The law protects me, and if they're dumb enough to offer me insurance you better believe I'm going to take it. I just want them to know that I'm on to them.

Dear MAMSI,

Fuck you, I'm not dead yet. Pony up the cash. We had a deal.

Love,

bryc3