Stupid Insurance Procedures
7 August 2003, 11:57 AM

Talk about waste...

Because of the budget crisis in Texas, the state's own HMO program went bye-bye. That mean that many state employees like myself were dumped from that HMO and into another program mid-year.

Of course, that was annoying since it meant that I had wait for my card to come in the mail, see my Primary Care Physician and get a referral to my allergist and new prescriptions (since the old ones with refills would not be honored). Still, I managed to jump through the hoops and get settled again. I started my allergy shots again, I had my birth control pill prescription working again and all was well.

Then I got a "thing" in the mail. It's what the insurance company sends out every time the provider makes a claim. It's not a bill, it's just a sort of FYI statement that tells me what was billed, what was covered, what I might still owe the physician, etc.

Let me repeat that first innocuous bit. "It's what the insurance company sends out every time the provider makes a claim". Mind you, I get allergy shots once a week, every week. That means that after I'm done getting my shot, the folks in the front office of the clinic do their paperwork to get the shot paid for and shortly thereafter we both receive another FYI statement in the mail.

Every. Week.

I already have a stack of 10 of these things. I'm going to be getting allergy shots once a week for three to maybe five YEARS. With visions of fields of clear-cut trees I decided to give my insurance provider a call. Surely there was a more efficient (and less wasteful) way of notifying me of service provided? Perhaps they could send out a monthly statement. You know, like most businesses I deal with do?

Nope. In fact, when I out-right asked if there was some way I could cease getting these statements or if there was a monthly option, the customer service person sounded a touch annoyed! No wonder insurance is so expensive. They're sending out eight mailings a month when they could be sending only *two*!

*sigh* The worst of it is that these are totally useless to me. I might as well throw them away unopened. The best I can do is stick them in the recycling bin and hope that they come to their senses at some point.