Those who know me will recall that in late September a very startled young fellow backed a large moving van (made of steel) into my Civic’s front end (made of plastic and spaghetti apparently). So I started the week off by dropping my (severely punctured) ‘06 Honda Civic – also known as “the darling thing” – at Gerber Auto Body for much-needed repair work. Shenanigans ensued, culminating in a long wait to receive what was to be my rental vehicle for the week: a late-model Chevy Aveo, hereafter known as “the go-kart of DEATH,” or TGKODEATH for brevity’s sake. Soul of wit, and all that.
For those who, like me of a week ago, have never had the – ahem – pleasure of curling up behind the wheel of an Aveo, let me give this word of advice: Don’t.
Do Not.
Avoid.
It’s A Trap.
Abandon All Hope And Knees, Ye Who Enter Here.
The experience was eerily like driving a golf cart with “airbags” and “doors” only golf carts are electric and therefore get better mileage by definition. A friend at work later told me a lovely and reassuring little anecdote about her husband driving the family Aveo (since replaced) a couple years back and colliding with another vehicle at a good clip. The airbags in their Aveo did not deploy, and the vehicle was totaled. Her husband survived more-or-less unharmed. The moral of the story is that my comparison to a golf cart is more spot-on than I had realized when I originally concocted my opinions (mere seconds after putting the car in gear for the first time).
Tuesday around lunchtime I called Gerber and was informed my car would be done by the end of the day. Tuesday at the end of the day I called and was informed that my car would actually be done the next day, around lunchtime. Wednesday I called after my precio…er, Civic…and glory hallelujah! it was ready for pickup. Ten minutes later, I arrive in person at Gerber where the bewildered desk lady informs me that the fellow – a mechanic? mayhap a janitor? – whom I had just spoken to was mistaken, the work was done but the vehicle was still due for a wash and surface treatment over the repainted bits before it could be returned. I could come and pick it up at five o’clock.
On arriving – again – to get my car, we got all the way to the key-swapping stage when I realized that in good conscience I should inform them that I had received but not cashed a check from the insurance company, and should I bring it by or void it or what? See, they’d told me that they’d be billing Allstate directly, and I should not worry my widdle head about a bill, at the start of the process. In fact, the statement should’ve been more like “If you have a check already, we need that. If the balance is any higher, we’ll bill them.” But that’s not what they said. And I’m a schmuck honest as a matter of general policy a schmuck.
So twice in one day I arrive, desperate to get out of the Aveo, and twice I am turned away.
Also: to add insult to injury I had forgotten to pull my IPass tollway transponder out of my Civic, so I missed two tolls while on commuter autopilot mode – one Monday evening, the other Tuesday morning – before I remembered that a twice-daily pit stop in the tollway cash lane was mandated until my Civic was back under me. On the up side, I now know how to pay missed tolls online. It’s surprisingly painless except for the aching in my wallet, but that’s to be expected.
Thursday morning I managed to successfully swap my Allstate check and one Aveo for my Civic, all shiny-clean and repaired. It’s a thing of beauty.
Thursday afternoon, mere hours later, I am informed by Maya that a superficial scrape on my daughter’s elbow – body armor is a must for walking exuberant black labs, by the way – has transmuted into a pus-filled gash surrounded by red, inflamed tissue. Arcadia’s arm hurts from elbow to shoulder, and the lymph nodes in her armpit are swollen and sore. It’s after hours, and the ER is in our immediate future.
An hour and a half, three website provider list searches, two customer service phone calls, and one partridge in a pear tree later, I’ve ascertained that a nearby ER may (or may not) be in our covered provider list based on the multiple contradictory Blue Cross Blue Shield website search results, and have independently confirmed this (or maybe not) via a phone conversation with a customer service rep.
As an aside, here’s a thought: part of the universal health care debate has been “I don’t want a Washington bureaucrat between me and my doctor!” This is utter BS. First, they won’t pay for that many bureaucrats. You’ll never get one of your very own, you’ll just have to share.
Second, there’s already a bloody army of insurance company bureaucrats between you and your doctor…and they are actively trying to make it harder for you. I fail to see how an indifferent bureaucrat is worse than a squad of malevolent ones. Either way you’re footing the bill for their paychecks. When a phone rep for the insurance company tries to look up a provider for you and says out loud that “they really shouldn’t make it so hard for us to find this stuff” then something is terribly awry.
My insurance company wants me to use their website to determine where I can go that’s in-system. Fine. But to look that up, I have to choose the type of coverage I have from a drop-down list. None of the options on the list appears anywhere on my ID card, my paperwork, my benefits book, my signup papers, nowhere…and their website doesn’t let me look it up.
So I have to – yep – guess. And if I guess wrong, I may get the wrong list of in-network doctors.
But wait, there’s more! Their lookup tool lets me look up hospitals…but not their ER facilities, which are handled under “Emergency Medicine” which is listed as a physician specialty. So does that mean that if the presiding ER physician is on the list, I’m covered? What about when they transfer us out of the ER and into the main hospital? How do I tell then? And if I don’t know, or the hospital doesn’t call the insurance company for a pre-authorization, or if the list is out of date, or if I chose the wrong plan type, or if the insurance company doesn’t feel like it – then, well, I may be in for thousands of dollars in hospital bills. For trying to jump through the hoops.
At least when bureaucrats are out to screw you, you usually know in advance. And they’re pretty straightforward about it most days.
Anyway, Arcadia is doing well. She held up like a real trooper – I had to explain to her that she’s supposed to tell the doctor when something hurts, not just suffer through it silently. She also managed not to pass out when they drew a lot of blood (can’t say that for myself the first time it was done to me…I was out like a light). She’ll be in the hospital for the next 24 hours for observation, on IV antibiotics. Maya’s staying with her. I’m at home, trying to relax enough to sleep, so I can deal with going to work in the morning.
Oh, and it’s started snowing, and the rent check may not have arrived at the landlord’s mailbox like it’s supposed to. And it’s not Saturday quite yet.
There’s supposed to be a punchline around here somewhere. Isn’t there?