Thursday, March 23, 2006

Achtung!

Ouch! My honey-pie told me I sound like Truman Capote, which caused me to wonder if I imprinted that peculiar voice "Capote" that Phillip Seymour Hoffman so ably mastered for the film? Am such a blank slate? Probably. So what.
Life is a bumpy, strained ride these past two weeks or so because of an insurance company that's being a complete Nazi SS interrogator with my lady, my dearest friend, and the situation has me frustrated and angry. But I'm flailing at windmills. The insurance company could care less whether it kills someone or causes someone to wind up hospitalized because of a policy that saves it money.
I don't understand how it happened but insurance companies have supplanted doctors when it comes to prescribing medication, and apparently, in Texas, that's just fine. This damned company (Cigna) is denying my friend's total prescription for a fallacious reason that has no basis in medical treatment or diagnosis. They've got a quantity limit on certain medications (the expensive ones, of course) and my friend takes one of these marked meds. The problem is, she can't simply drop her dosage to the level the insurance company will approve because it will cause grave medical repercussions if she does. And despite her physician writing and sending two letters appealing to the Cigna to lift the quantity limit (her doctor is a specialist in good standing with the state medical board), the company has refused. It's despicable, and it's reckless and dangerous! But I guess Texas legislators favor the insurance companies over the citizens, since all the laws in the state allow these companies to pretty much do what they damn well please. How is it lawful for the insurance company to void a physician's treatment regimen based on nothing more than a flimsy argument which, as I've said, has no basis in medical or scientific fact?
Aaaargh! How did insurers gain the power to take our money year after year, then create a crisis in our lives when it comes down to paying for a treatment that's expensive and telling us, in effect, to go to hell?
Ah sh@%! What's the use?