This coming semester (Spring 2011) I am again going to teach Medical Sociology. This is both an exciting opportunity to orient students to a fascinating field and a sobering occasion indeed. During the next five months I will have to live and breathe the grim statistics and sobering tales of the American health care (non)system. I have written about this subject on a number of occasions before and do not want to repeat myself; however, repeating oneself is surely one of the greatest pleasures life can afford.
This time I want to get personal with a number of tales that would surely provide enough fright for any number of juveniles arrayed before the campfire during dead of night. It all started a number of weeks ago when my endocrinologist (yes, I have one - he monitors my levels) suggested that I call my regular physician and set up a schedule of appointments in such a way that either one or the other saw me every six months. That sounded like a plan and last week I called my regular physician at St. John’s Clinic here in Springfield to complete the arrangements. Seems like a fairly simple transaction, no? Well, no.
The phone rang a couple of times and the cyborg on the other end quickly asked if I could be put on hold. No sooner had my internal assent been translated by my vocal cords, before I was enjoying music composed by the same folks who are subcontracted to build penitentiaries. My sentence, however, was not commuted as the few minutes turned into an eternity of anguished anticipation. In such circumstances, I never hold for more than a minute or two. I redialed immediately and cyborg gave me the identical greeting, asked the same question, and I foolishly gave the same assent, but with the proviso that, “I will not stay on hold forever.” Forever was definitely the key word. In fact, forever in some religious dispensations promises salvation, albeit at some indefinite time, but in this case salvation never came. I hung up and redialed and this time said in a rather stern and demanding tone that I would give cyborg my name and number and when the gracious moment arrived, I would be sitting anxiously by the phone awaiting undeserved condescension. Cyborg, however, would hear of no such arrangement, and again came the dreaded request: hold! At this point, I was enraged beyond description, filled with such emotion that my health was certainly not a beneficiary of the circumstance. But the health care system does not function to preserve YOUR health. It is the health of the system that is the subject of its prime directive. I was about to call St. John’s administration when I gave cyborg one more chance. This time through gritted teeth I said, “If you don’t take my name and number, the next call I make will be to St. John’s administration.” Wonder of wonders. Cyborg said, “How can we help you?” I was nonplussed. A few seconds ago cyborg was so busy that there was no time to jot down my name. Now we are all ears. The appointment made, I hung up thinking that with such genius in charge of the system what could possibly give us a second thought about the quality of our health care.
Coincidentally, a few days later something happened to create that second thought. The billing office of St. John’s Clinic called and wanted to discuss an outstanding bill in the amount of $115.14. I immediately opened my checkbook and found that I had written a check for that amount at the beginning of November. Billing office cyborg stated that, yes, the payment was received but that other amounts due had claimed it. I asked what amounts those were. In fact, they were the amounts created by the lab tests and my routine check by my endocrinologist. Those had happened a number of weeks after the payment had been mailed so I asked how the payment could have been misapplied. Cyborg became silent and had an “Er. . .” moment when it then became clear that the later amounts had not even been billed to me yet. So, when I asked what amount was outstanding, it turned out that nothing was outstanding. All of this was from a call placed to my home after 7:30 P.M. from a hospital billing office which had informed me during the course of this Kafkaesque dialogue that St. John’s gives patients only 20 days to pay all accounts in full unless other arrangements are made. Ah yes, nothing can beat the charity of a Catholic hospital system.
In this country we spend $2.3 trillion (and more given that figure is from 2008) for a really first crass health system. A little anesthesia never hurt when you are picking someone’s pocket.
