*Not* about the ACA or President O., it's about Big health insurance and spooky data mining

A couple of my co-retirees and I have talked about our coverage lately, specifically about intrusiveness. We’ve got it, so this is not about the Affordable Care Act.

We’ve had this big company contracted with our employer for a couple of years, and we had other big ones before, plus we are also now Medicare Advantage( d) . Before this the intrusiveness was not that badly noticeable. Now we get enhanced, “preventative,” stuff, like gym memberships. I don’t use that. Some of us do. Fine. My own route started with walking in the park for a couple of years, followed by about nine years of treadmill at home, then a couple of foot surgeries that put a stop to that.

Our coverage also deals with declarations of being non-smokers or else being or having smokers in the household with financial penalties. Fine, doesn’t affect me.

But what started irritating me in the past couple of years with the new Big company was getting phone calls from (nurses?) and mailings of glossy, colorful brochures and booklets with health “tips” and exhortations, building up into a call telling me they were going to send somebody to my house to assess/decide whether I need a provider. I told the (nurse?) that I don’t need that. She said, “But this service (the assessment?) is covered by your insurance.” I said that I don’t need a provider, therefore don’t need the assessment. She had a moment of silence as if figuring out what to make of this, then said, “But you don’t have to DISROBE!” I said this is not a factor, that I just don’t need either the assessment or the provider. She had another moment, then said, sort of menacingly, that she was going to document that I am refusing this. O.K., fine.

So that was over for me. Then in my regular routine doctor’s visit, my nurse showed me a print-out from my insurance company with a list of things they were telling my doctor to refer me to. I said there might be things I don’t need. She said that if I refuse they might drop me. When the doc came in he opened up, vented, saying, “They (all the big companies) are doing this. They question our prescriptions, they make these (lists of demands). Sometimes I get so mad.” I told him he is so mild mannered (or self-controlled) that I can’t picture him mad.

I mentioned the glossy brochures and phone calls and told him about the provider demand, how SOME expenses are wasteful. [FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: yellow"]I said that what is SPOOKY to me is how they KNOW what’s in my medical charts. He said they work from the CLAIMS they get for prescriptions and hospitals and surgical procedures, with everything being analyzed by their “GLORIFIED PHARMACISTS.”[/FONT] Then came the list. We had already done the cholesterol and diabetes labs, but what was new was that they wanted me to have a diabetes EYE exam plus a -------- OH, NO! -------- a COLONOSCOPY.

But my own irritating day now took a turn for the worst. I make my own appointments and deliver my own prescriptions to the local pharmacy. Well, the “HELPFUL” office nurse “efficiently” made the two appointments, fine. And was about to CALL IN the prescriptions. I accepted her appointments but told her I was going to the pharmacy myself. I get one of my meds elsewhere for five dollars. So I went to the pharmacy. To my surprise, despite years of my being there with different, impersonal pharmacists, this one greeted me by name. I laughed and asked how she knew my name and she said the nurse had already called in my order. I accepted this at face value.

Today I picked up the meds without checking them, silly me in my trust in my office nurse and pharmacist. I get the same ones for years with the other one not. I piddled around with errands in the car and HANNITY was yakking on the radio that he had just had a third colonoscopy this morning, talked about the necessity of it, how it’s not that bad, how they knock you out with the Michael JACKSON death anesthetic, how he didn’t take the colon cleanser until after he was off the t.v. air last night and got no sleep all night and had the procedure at 7:30 A.M. I started to get mildly anxious. My initial appointment was for tomorrow at 3:30 P.M. It’s cold and getting worse and this was all just too soon, so on the spur of the moment I stopped by the colon place and politely asked whether it was possible to change the appointment, which happened, for ten days away. I asked how much of a time gap there is between the initial appointment and the procedure and was told a week. Fine. I need some time to digest this.

When I got home I opened the prescriptions and it was a mess. They had filled the “elsewhere” prescription (at the higher price) and had given a different one for 30 days instead of 90. The office nurse had called in all of the order instead of my giving the instructions. The doctor’s office was closed. The pharmacist coolly dismissed my frustration saying they just follow doctor’s writings and the "extra" one can't be returned. I told her that what I had learned was that I NEED TO CHECK what the nurse and pharmacists do. For the benefit of any wingnuts out there, none of this has to do with OBAMA: It’s bigger than all of us, especially the spookiness of the data mining.