My hatred, disdain and general wish-they-would-all-die-in-some-horrible, painful, hopefully some kind of burning/skin melting and blistering pustule is involved, lingering and not covered by their own insurance-disease feelings towards Blue Cross are not new. I’ve written a previous post on the topic, pondering whether my coverage including Face Punching them. (They declined to offer a comment...)

And, I really can’t sum up my feelings now any better than when I wrote this back in September:

“FU—YOU, BLUE CROSS! I hope the biggest, most third-worldest, most sewage/medical waste/ebola monkey-est filled truck comes smashing into your next board meeting and explodes its excretia over ALL of your directors. I’ve given you over FORTY THOUSAND dollars over the past 12 years and you have given me NOTHING in return. You raise my rates every year just because I’m older, not because I’m using your black-hearted service. I’m not even sure WHAT my policy covers, I only know what it doesn’t, which seems to be pretty much everything.”

So, despite all of my feelings to the contrary – and somehow knowing that it was just going to lead us to where we are right now – I ended up needing to go to the doctor a couple of weeks ago. My left shoulder has been slowly and painfully deteriorating. It started off as a general tightness that I thought I could stretch out. And, hey, let’s be honest. It’s my left arm so it’s not like I really need the thing anyhow. (Plus it wasn't affecting my typing...) It pretty much already just dangles at my side, only there to fill out shirt sleeves and provide some form of body symmetry. But then it went to painful discomfort when I would move it to certain positions. As in, a jabby of pain when I’d reach out to get the mail out of my car window. Followed by several moments of throbbing, residual pain. Then it slowly escalated to horrible, searing pain somewhere on the level of when liquid metal Terminator jammed that pipe through Arnold’s back at the end of T2. I turn over at night, it hurts. I lay there at night, it throbs. Generally, my shoulder was not shouldering its share of life’s burdens. When I asked Dana if she thought I might have shoulder bone cancer, she decided it was time to go to the doctor. (And told me not to be ridiculous; I don’t have shoulder bone cancer.)

So I called Inlet Medical an IN NETWORK participator in cahoots with the Great Satan. I go and repeatedly explain to the doctor, “Don’t know how I hurt it.”

“Can’t pinpoint an instance where I’m like, ‘Wow! I just totally hurt my shoulder!’”

“Wasn’t playing and sports or throwing any balls or really doing anything.”

“Didn’t fall off any ladders at work. It just started hurting and gradually kept getting worse. You don't think it's shoulder bone cancer, do you?” (This followed by a lengthy discussion of family cancer history and the conclusion that I likely did NOT have shoulder bone cancer.)

So the doctor takes an X-ray – inconclusive – manipulates my arm a bit and when I can't elevate my arm beyond 90-degrees without wincing in pain, says, “Well, I can see that you have restricted movement.” (Our medical educational system at work!) And he says that he can give me a cortisone shot and see if that fixes the problem before heading on down to the next level in the halls of medicine, the ole MRI tube. So he gives me the shot – which is oddly cool and warm and numby and stingy and smiley and weepy all at once, as he works this long needle deep, deep, DEEP into my shoulder joint, slowly squirting and working in the magic healing juice.

That was back on the 6th.(Sadly, the shot has not done what I needed it to do, so it will likely be a visit to the MRI tube to determine if it is a torn rotator cuff of just something that I need to work out in totally-not-at-all-covered-by-Blue-Cross physical therapy.)

Yesterday, I get my “EXPLANATION OF BENEFITS – THIS IS NOT A BILL” from the Blue Devil. Amount for my visit? $326.00 (Curiously, within thirty cents of my monthly premium to the Eternal Unholy one. Perhaps the real number of the beast is 326...) Amount covered? $0. Next to every item is this “01*”. Medical Services $70.00 Amount not covered: $70.00 01* Office Surgery. $161.00 Amount not covered: $161.00 01*. Injections $50.00 Amount not covered: $50.00 01* Surgical Tray (which I guess is the plastic sheath the needle came in because I didn’t see any other tray in the room) $45.00 Amount not covered: $45.00 01*

So on the remarks section is 01 “These services may be the result of an accident. If so, they could be the responsibility of a third party or work related...”

Now they want me to fill out an accident questionnaire which is all just such a massive pile of medical waste filled BS. It is really just another dodge, another delay, another obstacle, another "lump this into the giant, heaping NO pile!" ("Why don't you just call it 'the pile'? It's not like there's a 'yes' pile and we need to differentiate!" "Bwa-ha-ha! Deny a few more claims and put yourself in for a bonus!") in the path to me getting them to pay for anything. 

I just hate Blue Cross SOOOOOOOOO much. I swear, I wish that bad, bad illegal, end-of-times level suffering, hard pipe-hittin' unspeakable, Tony Montana things would happen to them. And I don’t care if they are just the receptionist or the janitor or the guy that cleans the windows.  I’m lumping them all into the cesspool of culpability. To sum up the speech from Clerks on independent contractors who got killed while working on the second Death Star – “Think the average stormtrooper knows how to install a toilet main? Alls they know is killing and white uniforms.” -- “Any contractor working on that Death Star knew the risk involved. If they got killed, it’s their own fault.”

That’s how I feel about ALL the Blue Cross workers. They know what a heartless, soulless corporation they’re working for. Every day they go in, they know that it is to solely deny more claims, generate more dollars, produce more suffering. Whether directly or by indirectly helping to support the machine. The guy that cleans the coffee machine is helping to make the coffee better so the guy that denies a claim and have more claim denying pep and pizazz. They know that the entire company has only two stamps to choose from when a claim comes through: DENIED and RESUBMIT FOR DENIAL. Every time one of them cashes a paycheck, they know that it is blood money.

I’d say that there has to be a special place reserved in the deepest, darkest pit of Hell for Blue Cross, but the truth is, that place is probably the VIP Champagne Room reserved for the darkest, most vilest scum and villainey. Where they sit in sleek, buttery Italian leather furniture, watch glasses-less 3D TV on wall-sized video screens and laugh uproariously as they toast each other and drink Cristal from the hollowed out skulls of those that have died while waiting for a claim or procedure to be approved.

I seriously think about cancelling my stupid coverage, saving the $326.30 a month and just working out cash deals with the doctor for those once every 5 years times that I need a visit. But then I think of a golden ray of hope at the end of the rainbow that causes me to pause.  Maybe, just maybe, there will be some long-term, incredibly expensive, on-going, undeniable procedure that I will need. It will take years – and YEARS – to cure and require many, MANY doctor visits and will cost millions of dollars. My coverage will be fully paid, my previous history will be unblemished and Blue Cross will have no loophole of deniability and will be forced to PAY! The malady will be surprisingly unpainful and with no visible ill-effects. In fact, it won’t be life altering at all, just exceptionally, stratospherically expensive. And necessary.

In closing, suck it, Blue Cross. Suck it long. And suck it hard.