Chronic Rants

Dear Assholes,

To begin with, I am a living, breathing, feeling human being. I know that may be hard for you to believe, but it’s true! I have thoughts and feelings, just like you. Well, not just like you, per se, but like most human beings.

Next, let’s consider that I am very sick. And remember that stress makes my illness worse. And not having a source of income while also dealing with you and with lawyers is very much a stress-inducing situation.

Now, let’s look at our goals:

• My main goal is to get my health back. My secondary goal is to get you to give me the money you owe me so that I can pay my rent and, importantly, pay for medical treatments that aren’t covered by health insurance.
• Your main goal is to save money by never paying me. Failing that, your goal is to save money by getting me to go back to work so that I no longer need your payments.

Please correct me if I’m wrong about your goals, but for the sake of this letter, let’s assume they’re true. First, are you really saving money by denying my claim? In this process you are paying staff to handle the matter, lawyers to handle the legal aspects, and doctors to review my files. My guess is that many of these people are paid at a high hourly rate. Are you really paying them less than you would be paying me if you had just approved my claim to begin with?

Next, you want me to work. If I work, you don’t have to pay me. From my file, you should see that I want to work also. I have a solid resume. I have held multiple jobs in the past, even while suffering from chronic pain. I have worked almost non-stop (except for school) since I was 14. When my symptoms got worse in 2011, I tried to continue working past when I was really healthy enough to do so. I continued because I wanted to work. So of course I’ll return to work as soon as my health allows it. This means that our goals now align: you want me to be healthy enough to work and I want me to be healthy enough to work.

So how do we get me healthy enough to work? Well, I am pursuing various treatments. There have been three things that have slowed me down which you can help to improve:

1. When I lost my health insurance, that slowed things down. I had to skip seeing doctors. I couldn’t pursue treatments. I had to stop taking a vital medication for a month, then spent another month recovering from the affects even when I resumed taking it. Gee, thanks for taking away my health insurance.
2. Money is an issue. There are tests I would run and medications I would take, but I can’t afford them right now. If you had given me the payments you owed me, I would have done these things.
3. Stress is very bad for me. It has been preventing my adrenals from recovering from my adrenal fatigue, and that in turn has worsened my thyroid problems. In fact, just in the last few months, since you jerked me around by delaying your decision on my appeal, my TSH has jumped from way too high for me to way too high for anyone. Stress has increased my fatigue and my pain. Stress has prevented me from making any strong strides towards improvement. Of course, I only have two sources of stress in my life right now: my health problems and this insurance mess. Why is this insurance mess causing stress? For a few examples, I don’t know if I can renew the lease on my apartment. I don’t know where I’ll be living in a couple of months. My bank account is almost empty. I have spent years and years of savings. I can’t go out to eat with friends, go to a museum, see a movie, or do most other social things, even on the rare days I feel well enough to do so. I’m not sure if I should be selling my car (but how I would I get to doctors?) or get rid of my cell phone. I don’t know if I should be applying for Section 8 housing. These are major issues that are in limbo, and have been in limbo for a long time. Oh, yeah, and I haven’t been able to file my taxes yet!

Let’s see how you could help:

1. Approve my claim and I’ll once again have steady health insurance coverage.
2. Approve my claim and I’ll have enough money to run all of the tests I need and to take all of the medications that might help me.
3. Approve my claim and my stress will go away almost completely. My adrenal glands can recover, and then we can treat my thyroid directly.

You see, if you would just treat me with some decency and respect, if you would approve my claim and meet your deadlines, if you would communicate with my lawyer so that I know what’s going on, then we would all be happy: I could get health and go back to work, and you could save money.

Now ask yourself: why aren’t you doing it?

Not-at-all-sincerely,

                 A pissed off patient

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 28th, 2013 at 7:05 pm and is filed under Expectations, Frustration, Healthcare, Insensitive, Rants. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.