Tag: Male

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I was probably a little rough on that lady…

NewImage.pngJust got a call from someone claiming to be a billing company for my GP.

I haven’t seen my GP in 7 months, so when she asked me if I’d gotten the statement I was all “What?”

Then she reads off the wrong address. AGAIN! and I got a little pissed off. My MAILING address hasn’t changed in 20 years! Even after the house burned down the mailing address didn’t change.

NewImage.pngThis billing firm and I have been through this time and again and they STILL haven’t gotten it right.

Part of it is the arrogance of the data entry people.

After all the one in 10,000 forms that they process, which has a post office box on it can’t possibly be right. The patient filling out the form would take the time to put the post office box number on the form, especially since it is completely un-necessary.

NewImage.pngShe said “I don’t know why the information is incorrect.”

I replied, “I do! It’s because you people are horribly inefficient and your data is corrupt. I will be bringing this up with the doctor the next time I see him.  It’s funny, I get mail from the doctor’s office with no difficulty.”

I disconnected.

Of course this begs another question. Since I haven’t seen the doctor in 7 months or so, what the hell is this billing company trying to bill me for? I thought we’d settled up long ago.

I see a complete review of my medical bills in the near future. It’s not unheard of for medical billing companies to send out duplicate bills long after the fact, in hopes of pocketing the excess cash.

NewImage.pngThis is one of the reasons that I prefer to PAY for the services rendered at the time that the services are rendered. I hate having some bullshit insurance company negotiation going on for months behind the scenes that results in a bill that I can’t verify because I don’t know how much the services are costing me in the first place.

This isn’t about Obamacare, this is about the way the insurance companies and the medical providers services have evolved. This is the kind of thing that government regulation could have assisted the people with.

As I’ve said before, I’d prefer to deal upfront. I’d like to know what the cost for each service and materials for that service are. Then I, as an informed consumer could choose which services and procedures I’m willing to pay for, and which services are perhaps extraneous.

DSC_0442.jpgAfter all, you don’t buy new brakes for your car at every oil change, why should you have an expensive and un-necessary service done every time you go into the doctor?  You & your doctor should be working co-operatively and that requires informed choices. Pricing and purpose of a test or procedure isn’t unreasonable to ask for.

The way the system is now, you can have billing that shows up literally YEARS after the fact and that makes it very difficult to figure out if you should pay the bill, or if the bill is even yours.

I guess I’ll know in a few days. When I get the bill I’m going to drop by the doctors office and have a little chat.

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There are times when I just want to scream!

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And not in a good way!

I’m a bit ADD. I know, I know, that’s become an overused cliché catchall that everyone and their brother uses to excuse anything from a hangover to a stroke.

Hear me out. I’ve been like this my whole life, and for me, this is completely normal. I’ve adapted to being this way because I’ve never know any other way to be. There are times when the ADD presents challenges, loud noises, crowds, bright flashing lights, can really mess with my calm and freak me out. Most of these challenges are manageable. If I feel myself being overwhelmed I’ll find a quiet spot to collect myself and then I’m good to go.

imagesOne of the biggest challenges ADD presents me with is listening to someone talk. If they have something to say and they keep on track I’m fine. If, however, they meander and pause the main thread of their story to fill in useless details or give me background that they should have given at the beginning of the story, then I’m likely to stop listening. In the worst case, the person doesn’t notice my eyes glazing over and they keep yammering.

This is usually when the ADD becomes a real problem. I respond first with annoyance, then hostility, then outright anger. The poor fool telling me, whatever they were telling me has no idea what they’ve done wrong or why I’m pissed off.

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Believe it or not, I feel guilty when I lose control and get angry because of the way someone is telling their story. It’s not fair to the other person. As far as they’re concerned they are telling a nice coherent little tale.

To an ADD person it’s annoying tedium. I can explain, I think using the following example.

The church made, because of the rummage sale, the church made, the donations to the rummage sale this year because, because of estate donations allowed the church to make,  One estate donated a teak modern dining set that was worth about 5000 dollars it went at silent auction for 2000, it was one of those Danish modern designs, I don’t know who bought it. The usual amount that the church makes on a rummage sale is $15,000 or so. This year the church made, oh there was a lot of very nice estate jewelry some of it brought in a lot higher than expected prices. This year the church made $30,000 although the final total isn’t in yet.

The story could have been summed up simply.

The church doubled it’s usual rummage sale income this year due to a number of estate donations.

Then if I was interested I could have asked what the total dollar amount was.

benefitsadhd2To an ADD person, the story, as first presented, is like fingernails on a chalkboard. The constant teasing about how much the church actually made, is annoying as hell.

There’s another level though that’s worse for the ADD person. It’s that for every one of those pauses we pause a stream of thought and start another one. Pretty soon your 2 minute anecdote has us nearing the maximum capacity of our brain power.

Think of it like trying to compute orbital mechanics of the entire solar system and keeping all the variables in your head.

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This is, I think part of the reason we ADD folk don’t like watching the late night news, it’s the constant teasers. If the 10 o’clock news really wants to piss of the ADD crowd; tease us for an hour and then never get to the story!

“Stay tuned to find out why your penis is at risk”

The way my brain works is probably best described as a corral of skittish horses. I have tons of thoughts running all the time and it requires an effort of will to harness those thoughts, put blinders on them, and then hitch them up to the wagon of a project I’m trying to do.

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A conversation like the story above tends to have an effect on my thoughts, that’s similar to what you get if a rattle snake suddenly appears in a corral full of skittish horses. After the chaos and dust clears, you’ve got horses spread to the four corners of the corral and none of them are going to do any work for the rest of the day.

I live with a person that tells stories like the example above.  That pisses me off by itself. (Come to think of it, my stepdad tries to lecture on science and technical stuff the same way; no wonder I dreaded asking him questions when I was in school!)

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What really pisses me off is when I catch myself telling stories the same way.

My ability to write today is gone. I’m going to go outside and run the weed whacker. I will avoid holding a fluffy pillow firmly over someone’s face.

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Back on the phone with Anthem BlueCross

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This is what, the 12th time I’ve had to call these people in 4 months?

Today it’s about receiving a couple of bills that make absolutely not fucking sense. I’m sooooo Tired of dealing with this bullshit!

Then there’s the little annoyances that tend to get you (alright ME!) amped up before you’ve even gotten into a hold queue wating for an agent that will probably fuck your shit up worse than it already is.

I swear every time I speak to one of these people they claim that everything is happy and good to go and then a month later I get something generated from a computer that makes it obvious something is still horrifically fucked up.

So in order to blow off steam before I actually talk to a human, here are the irritations in the order of encountering them.

Item One

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Bills (one each) for portions of a policy. Contained within these 3 page bills is one page with explainations of how I can have an interpreter and a phone number for the Department of Insurance.

This page is printed in Spanish, Chinese, Vietnamese, Tagalog, Korean, Russian, Japanese, Arabic, Armenian, Punjabi, Khmer, Hmong, and Persian.

The main bill is all printed in English and I’ve identified as being an English speaker, so I’m somewhat annoyed by the waste of 3 pieces of paper every month.

Actually it’s 9 pieces of paper every month because they are supposed to be billing this directly from my checking account.

What they’ve been doing is billing my account then sending me 9 pieces of paper telling me that they’ve billed my account.

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Item Two

Of course nowhere on this bill do they have a phone number to call if you have questions about billing. Instead they say you’re supposed to call the Member Number on the back of your insurance card. Only problem is:

THERE IS NO MEMBER PHONE NUMBER!

There is however a customer service number that puts you into the insanity of a voice prompted computer system that doesn’t understand standard spoken English.

Eventually I just start hammering around on random numbers until I get into a hold queue.

Item Three

The reminder that all representatives are still busy played every 30 seconds. Yeah I kinda figured out that you guys are busy BECAUSE I was on hold listening to shitty hold music! How about extending that notice to once every 90 seconds?

Then I hear someone answer the phone. Wow! I was only on hold for 45 minutes this time.

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I get to a very nice man in the Philippines. Yeah, the Philippines who is able to answer my questions. Really?

The folks in the Philippines are a very nice and gracious people but why aren’t we talking to Americans?

You know out of work Americans who are struggling to feed themselves and THEIR families?

Item Four

Anyway, the nice man explains that the two bills I have saying that payment is immediately due are because Anthem failed to debit my checking account again.

Apparently these bills are trying to catch up for 2 months of payments that are in arrears. He offers to bring the accounts up to date but wants to do it via a credit card.

I decline. I’m growing more suspicious of Anthem.

I mean really, if they can’t keep it straight that I’ve given them permission to take their payments right out of my checking account; this is the 4th time they’ve screwed this up since November, can I really trust them to pay for services to my Doctor?

Item Five

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The nice man tells me that one of the bills is for Dental insurance.

Uhhh, I cancelled that back in Feb. Then he explains… It’s for pediatric dentistry.

SAY WHAT? I thought that’s why my damn medical insurance when up after the fucked up implementation of Obamacare!

(I swear, if ever there was something that needed to be aborted, Obamacare fits the bill).

But since they’re sending me a bill for it separately, It occurs to me that I can refuse to pay the bill.

Item Six

As I’m thinking over this insanity It occurs to me the cost of my meds is 300 a month without insurance. If I go to Tijuana or use a Canadian pharmacy I could perhaps get my generic drugs cheaper. Even if I stayed in the American pharmacies I’d still save money.

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I wonder if I were to simply cancel the whole damn shebang and let our fucked up government BILL me for not having insurance if I’d be better off paying out of pocket.

I wonder if I can get a catastrophic policy just in case I end up in the hospital?

I find myself thinking of tropical beaches out of the US once a year taking a “Medical Vacation” to Indonesia, or Curacao.

The thought of a once a year checkup combined with warm sand and excellent diving is a cloying one.

I wonder if the math would work out.

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I’ve got till the 10th to decide what I want to do. I suppose I’ll think it over and run some math. Perhaps I’ll shop around for another private insurer who actually can keep the payment and billing straight on a month to month basis.

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Ok folks we need to talk.

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It is perfectly OK to be gay.

It is equally perfectly OK to be straight

Bi Folks are probably the luckiest because for them any party is a smorgasbord. And THEY are perfectly normal as well.

(Note, I’m including Lesbian, Transgendered, and Questioning folk in the larger over arching broadly defined groups above. Deal with it!)

BUT!

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And this is a real big deal for me. It is not ok for us to shove our beliefs, politics, and details of our lives down someone’s throat that is diehard straight, or devoutly religious, or who may have outdated or even antiquated beliefs, in our opinion.

I mean ask yourself how you’d feel if a straight person was telling you, you were wrong because of your desires. How about a straight person forcing you to bake them a cake for their sons first sexual encounter with a hooker?

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Both are distasteful and you’re entitled to say, “I do not agree,” or “I prefer not to do business with you.”

Why then do we feel it’s not ok for a devoutly religious person to refuse to bake our wedding cakes? How are we morally superior when we shout about a CEO being homophobic and demand their resignation?

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We are winning the right to marry whom we choose. We are making progress in winning hearts not with force, but with education, compassion, and common decency, we don’t need to keep pounding everyone over the head.

And yet we do.

We’ve become guilty of the same things that we’ve berated conservatives and religious groups about for years.

Intolerance!

Are we so shallow as a group that all we want is revenge?

“Oh Bitch you’re going to bake my wedding cake! I’ll lawyer up and FORCE you to do it!”

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Really? You’re going to serve that cake, made by someone you’ve deeply offended and pissed off to your friends and family? Ever heard the old adage, “Don’t piss off your food server?”

And if you’re smart enough to know you don’t want to serve a cake baked under those conditions to your friends and family…

Then let it the fuck go!

Why the hell would you want to go to the hassle of lawyering up just to prove a point. Make your point by going to the competitor bakery and then make sure all your friends do the same. You don’t need to picket, you don’t need to say or do anything other than find a different bakery and help them become successful.

All these people freaking out about Firefox’s CEO having an opinion about homosexuality that they disagree with is insane! 

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Firefox is a FREE product! Use it, OR Don’t. But for god sake, get the hell over yourselves! Go back to Internet Explorer or use Chrome. NEXT! 

There was an article on Breitbart today with the headline “Teacher White Privilege Conference: Whites are never cured of racism”

First and foremost, the nature of the conference and its message is offensive on its face.  Second, is this where the LGBT community really wants to go?

20 Years from now do you want to have a conference titled “Straight People are never cured of homophobia and must be re-educated time & again”

Lets get beyond the continuous “Butthurt”

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Its time to realize that many of the GLBT organizations cease to have relevance when we achieve equality. Its in the best interests of such organizations to keep the GLBT community frothing at the mouth at perceived slights, because without relevance these organizations are out of business.

The GLBT community isn’t quiet equal yet, but the day is coming and on that day the “Special” organizations should voluntarily and gladly lock their doors.

On that day we’ll be like everyone else our rights and freedoms guaranteed by The Constitution. We should all begin thinking of ourselves and acting, as normal participants in our society now.  Consider it training for ‘The Big Day’.

We don’t want to make the mistake of continuing to highlight how different we are.

I personally believe separatism, whether imposed from within or without is detrimental to any group in the society at large. I think of it like; Stop acting different and you’ll stop being different. Most people today don’t care if you’re GLBT, take that and revel in it, but don’t be mean. 

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I for one am sick and tired of story after story of the GLBT community abusing people who have  different beliefs or opinions about homosexuality. 

Its time for the GLBT community to grow the fuck up.

Not everyone on the “playground” is going to like us, nor should they be required to. Let folks have their own opinions, let them decide if they want to leave money on the table, let them come to realize, in their own time that the inclusion of the GLBT community will not bring about the end of the world as they know it.

Live as an equal member of your community, get involved, be a member of the neighborhood watch, volunteer your time, make your community a better place. Take the initiative to teach others a positive message by your actions, instead of a negative message by being a distraction.

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People will figure out you’re GLBT and they wont care, because you’re an asset to the community. 

We can’t demand equality and freedom while denying the same to others. 

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I guess all this work is a good thing

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My pants fit differently.

I’ve been in motion since I got here and I suppose it’s showing in my losing a little of the gut.

I could of course stand to lose a lot more of the gut but eating healthy here is a very tough thing to do.

I’ve cooked a couple of times and since I don’t load everything up with salt my efforts haven’t been necessarily well received. 

This is southern cooking at it’s saltiest, oiliest best. Even the blooming onion at Outback seemed laden with more grease than usual.

I’ve been trying to maintain some semblance of a decent diet. Making smarter food choices isn’t exactly easy here without causing someone offense.

So I keep hydrated and keep moving. I’m hoping that the increased activity will at least balance out the calories. The only way to dilute the salt inherent in everything is plenty of water.

Even then I’m sure that I’ve consumed a years supply of salt and preservatives in the past month.

NewImageGotta say there were some nice barbecue the other night. I can’t complain too loudly.That’s going to take a good 6 months to purge from my system I’m sure!

I just learned something that should never be googled. Obese Men! OMG! 

Or maybe it should be googled and when you lose your lunch you’ll think I don’t want to ever look like that!

The picture at right should reduce your desire to claw your own eyes out.

I told you not to google “obese men” did you listen? Hell no!

I don’t know if I’d recommend tending ailing parents as a weight loss routine, but as a bootcamp it might work.

I’ll rent my folks cheap!  First come first serve.