Today’s my 37½ birthday. Midway between 35 and 40. The beginning of my late 30’s. All right, I’m officially middle-aged. I kind of like looking Daddy-ish. I like having a moustache and being able to trim it down or grow it long, and I like having a bare chin again. I’ll get tired of the look soon, and probably grow a beard back, but today it works for me.
Today I accomplished one thing: my appeal of denial letter to United Health Care. Way back in 2002, my health insurance was covered under my lover’s plan as domestic partner. He got arrested for PWID of 690 grams of crystal methamphetamine in June of that year and subsequently fired from his job, whereupon our health benefits stopped. Fortunately, I was employed at the time and was able to acquire health benefits on my own, with—who else?—United Health Care!
Here it gets interesting. I filled out the paperwork initially showing my prior coverage accurately. A saw my doctor as normal. He prescribed routine bloodwork (as normal). I shortly get a letter in the mail telling me that this stuff was denied due to a preexisting condition. Since I’ve had consistent health insurance since 1991, I knew someone was mistaken. I called the company and they told me I had to send them this arcane document known as a Certificate of Coverage from the other insurance company.
Question: “What other insurance company? Why do I have to be the middle man?”
Answer: Because in spite of all common sense dictating otherwise, the Claim Denial Department of United Healthcare won’t spend an extra little five minutes to find out if I was, in fact, covered by the same company.
Alas, I’ve spent hours on the phone over the past year and a half, and haven’t really listened to the suggestions of their programmed telephone reps. You see, I have ADD, and I have a really hard time doing things that don’t make any sense. But today, I did what they said—wrote a letter of appeal to their Appeals Department.
Let’s see if that lights a fire under their asses. Ta-ta for today.
