“Welcome to Allied Medi-Magic Insurance… Please hold. Your call is important to us, and a qualified representative will be immediately available in six hours or less. For your safety, this call is being monitored. Do not hang up, or your co-pay will increase 200%. Pressing the “speaker” button will automatically charge a convenience fee of $421.50 to your account.
Kindly note that the routing code of your call has been changed to register on your phone bill as a 1-900 number with a trivial per-minute fee of $50.98. Take a deep breath and relax. If you blow up, your emergency room fees will not be covered. And please watch your language, or you’ll be an organ donor sooner than you think. Your call is important to us. Please hold…”
When you’re sick, it doesn’t matter if you’re progressive, conservative, libertarian, or Rastafarian. If your health care is managed by an insurance company, you might feel the need to pick up a ceramic dish and throw it.
My own insurance battle began with the birth of my first son. Nine months of prenatal exams, ultrasounds, and visits to a high-risk specialist—all within my insurance company’s network—apparently weren’t enough to convince Headquarters I might one day deliver a baby.
Soon after my husband and I brought our brand new family member home, we received a letter. The hospital’s delivery fees, it said, wouldn’t be covered because the insurance company hadn’t been given 24 hours’ notice. My husband, sleep-deprived and grumpy, called them right away. “What do you mean 24 hours?” he queried. “She was pregnant for nine months! How did you think this was going to end?”
Despite the antics of a thoroughly debauched insurance industry, citizens in our community are rightly worried about how new federal regulations are going to affect their own health care costs. Every smart business owner is worried, too, never mind the threat of a mountain of new paperwork.
Citizens of the 39th LD have an especially good reason to worry. Our Republican Representative in position 1, Dan Kristiansen, usually prefers to muck-rake rather than legislate. (Who wouldn't? It's much easier!)
That's why I'm excited to hear that the 39th LDDO has named Eleanor Walters as their nominee for State Representative, pos. 1. She has degrees in both Public Affairs and Law, and she's worked hard to gain the education and background needed to be an excellent Representative. In fact, contracts are her specialty, and she's ready to put her experience to work for us in the legislative arena.
Helping citizens and businesses sort through the health care overhaul will be a big challenge. It will also be the duty of our elected Representatives; state legislators do have the power to regulate the insurance industry, to mesh it with federal law to best suit our community. Bringing an end to the health care industry's fine-print paradigm, and making WA state law serve us in the face of big federal changes will be both difficult and incredibly important.
Perhaps we owe it to our community to support Eleanor Walters. We owe it to ourselves to buy some new dishes...and keep them. : )
~E. A. S.
(Note: Allied Medi-Magic is a completely fictitious entity with no relationship, intentional or implied, to any actual organization.)
