Comments(4)

No this is not the obvious joke. Of course insurance companies are snakes. Everyone knows that! This is about a real life experience.

A while back I posted about the fucked up nature of the US healthcare system. This is a bit of a continuation of that theme. A bit of backstory…I take two prescription medications and am having a helluva time getting health insurance from the greedy and corrupt insurance companies. As it stands now I’m in limbo. I can’t get covered under an "underwritten" plan so I have to go with a HIPAA plan—a government mandated plan that forces the greedy and corrupt insurance companies to cover people they don’t want to. Of course it’s 5x more expensive than a regular plan and Blue Cross of California has had me in limbo for 5 weeks as they "process" the plan. (Funny how it only took them a week to process and deny me for the regular plan.) Did I mention that insurance companies are greedy and corrupt snakes?

So back to the post…Last weekend I was out hiking like I do almost every weekend. I had been out for two hours and was on the way back to my car. I was walking down a wide dirt path and was only about 50 yards from my car. I was day-dreaming and looking at the clouds, the trees, and at my car in the distance.

Then I happened to look down at the trail and saw a snake lying about 4 feet in front of me. My first thought was that it looked like the gopher snake that my friend had nearly stepped on the week before. But then the snake reared back into striking position and I’d never seen a gopher snake do that before.  Then I got a good look at its head and I thought, "wow that looks like a viper". And then I saw the little horns on its head and thought "Wow that looks like a rattlesnake." Only then did it dawn on me to look at its tail…Rattles! Damn!

Until that moment it hadn’t even dawned on me that it might be a rattlesnake. Normally I’d have just walked around the snake but this guy was aggressive. He moved towards me a bit and stayed in the agressive striking position. I backed off and he eventually turned around and went into the grass.

Normally this would have just been another cool thing that you see in nature. But as soon as I realized it was a rattlesnake the first thought in my mind was "Shit, I don’t have insurance!" I recalled hearing of treatments for rattlesnake bites costing from $25k-$100k. I just thought to myself, what if I hadn’t looked down at that moment? Two more steps and, as aggressive as that snake was acting, I know I would have been bitten.

I came back and told my wife who said "you’re not going hiking again until you get insurance." I kind of agreed at that point. So on Monday I called Blue Cross of CA to find the status of my coverage. "Sorry we don’t know anything yet. The 4th of July really backed us up. But don’t worry, you’ll be back covered to July 1 when you’re approved." (Side note…how did a one-day holiday back them up for over two weeks?)

So now I get a further insight into the corrupt and greedy insurance racket. It’s now July 25 and I don’t have coverage, but they say when I do get coverage they’ll backdate it to July 1. What a crock of shit. Now that I haven’t had insurance for more than 3 weeks (and luckily haven’t needed it), if and when they ever approve it, they’ll charge me for the weeks when I didn’t have it and couldn’t use it. And I can almost guarantee that if I had needed it (gotten bitten by a snake for instance) they would have said "Sorry you’re not covered." What a crock of shit!

They’re stringing me along and apparently I can’t do anything about it. Sure I’ll complain to the insurance commissioner but I doubt that will do any good. I’m not covered now, but they say that I’ll be covered soon. Meanwhile I have to walk on eggshells and play their game.

I’m telling ya, you gotta watch out for snakes. (Both on the trail and at the greedy and corrupt insurance companies too.)

4 Responses to “Snakes and Insurance Companies”

1. fairlane, on July 25th, 2007 at 3:09 pm, said:
   

   I’m still getting threats on a weekly basis from those fuckers even though I’m paying them every month.

   We need Universal Coverage. Most Americans support it, and it’s complete bullshit we don’t have it.

   Did you know that Iraqis injured in our “War” get free Medical Coverage, and guess who pays?

   Yep.

2. Realitology, on August 2nd, 2007 at 10:49 am, said:
   

   It’s a sad, sad situation.

3. Jethro, on March 18th, 2008 at 4:45 pm, said:
   

   The whole healthcare industry is a racket. I
   signed up for a HDLP individual plan awhile back.
   I didn’t know about all the corruption in the healthcare industry at the time until I read about people getting their policies cancelled when they got sick due to post claims underwriting. This
   allows them to collect your monthly premiums but
   then if you get badly injured or cancer they can cancel your coverage if they find something in
   your medical records you didn’t disclose when you
   signed up leaving you to foot the bill and leaving you basically uninsurable. It’s hard to remember back
   10 years ago what you may have went to the dr. for. Individual policies are a gamble at best.
   Group policies are the way to go and they
   can’t cancel your policy and don’t have
   the shear number of denied claims the individual
   policy holders get.

   So even though I have insurance I really am not
   confident about it . There was a case here in California about a woman that had cancer and they
   cancelled her covererage half way through treatment because she lied about her weight.She was just recently was awarded a large settlement but I don’t think that will deter the insurance companies from continuing that practice.

   Then you have the ridiculously inflated prices
   for medical procedures which you have absolutely no idea what they cost ahead of time. I used up my
   $2500 deductible last year in no time with one procedure which did little to help diagnose me.That’s the last time I rely on the web to estimate what the cost will be.They billed about $6500.00 for it and the estimates on the websites were from $ 800 – $2500. The insurance did knock it down to about $3K.
   I then called the hospital about the CT scan I had to get precertified to see what it cost and was told $8000.00.But she told me that was not what my insurance would pay but if for some reason the insurance denied my claim that’s what they would be coming after me for.I then asked her what
   the insurance company would pay but she would
   not divulge that info. So now I will see if I can find a cheaper test in case my insurance doesn’t want to pay. I will say they have been very nice on the telephone and have dealt with their minor share of the claims so far . Its funny how when I had full comprehensive coverage through my last employer and didn’t pay a penny I took it for granted.

4. June, on January 16th, 2014 at 7:38 pm, said:
   

   The people who work for insurance company
   They are the Devils
   Who without conscience Rob. Hard working American people
   These fools actually believe
   The money Given to them belongs to them
   They have no conscience
   They are sociopaths
   One would have to be a sociopath
   To work for an insurance company
   They are bad seeds
   Born without souls
   Completely and totally evil
   Wicked through and through
   Stupid beyond belief
   Ignorant wondering Buffoons
   Who hate The policyholder
   But worship the money
   They have no goodness in them
   They are you human snakes

Comment on this post below

You can leave a response, or