-I hope this letter finds it way to you.
-R. Dean Taylor (Indiana Wants Me )
I had a health scare over the past several weeks, which included a couple of trips to the emergency room and finally winding up in the hospital for surgery.
I'm starting to feel better but the biggest impediment is Anthem, my health insurance company.
I don't know if they are going to jerk me around on payments as the bills have not come in yet.
What I can't handle is the non-stop robo calls from their office.
You would think someone is running for Sheriff or Congress. The calls come non-stop.
And I can't figure out how to stop them.
I've been home ill, sleeping at odd hours, and the calls manage to find me the second I fall asleep. I've tried several times to respond but there is never a human on the other end. They give me a number to call but when you get there, it continues with a series of questions and prompts about my hospital stay. I try like crazy to talk to a human but have never figured out a way to make that happen.
When I go to an alternative number, all I get is more prompts.
If I ever speak to a human, my first request is LEAVE ME ALONE. I am trying to get well and talking to a health insurance company is not going to help.
Secondly, I signed up every "do not call" list that my state and the United States have to offer. I don't want human beings to call me, let alone a robot. I thought it was illegal for companies to harass me day and night but Anthem either found a loophole or is just ignoring the law.
I suspect if you are huge, billion-dollar health insurance carrier, no one is going to rap your knuckles if you are out doing data mining.
This brings me to a central problem with the entire health insurance system. Human beings, who may possibly care about other human beings, are in no part of the process.
Since Anthem didn't make it possible for its supposedly ill clients to talk to another person, it is counting on its computers and data gatherers to "let them know what people think."
If I ever speak to an actual human being, they are definitely going to hear what I think. And probably not like what I am hearing.
If Anthem had bothered to send me an old-fashioned letter, or better yet, a get well card, I might have told them what they wanted to know.
Instead I wonder if they are trying to drum up more business, by waking me up so much that I wind up back in the hospital.
I can't be the only person they are robo calling. I just can't figure out how it is legal for them to do so.
Even more so, I can't figure out how it makes good business sense.
If these are the "great minds" running our health insurance companies I can see why so many people favor a single payor system.