Insurance, Rain and Flipped Views

 

This is my view from my desk today on this very rainy day. This is what I am looking at when I do live video. We saw that water had overrun and flooded the parking lot of our local grocery store today, and a street over from us where friends live is under water. We are dry. Thank the heavens!

Today started badly. Our insurance company. Our supposedly 'gold standard' insurance for government employees. I am doing that horrible delicate dance of informing them that Jim is having surgery next week, getting the ball rolling on pre authorization.

I did discover that they are about 6 months behind instead of the usual 3 or 4 months behind on processing claims, which is why I haven't heard anything from them on all our earlier claims.

But the truly upsetting thing happened after that. Our insurer pays if you keep up with tests and exams. They issue offers every now and then for things like a $30 to a 120 amount on a special co-pay Visa card. I do those things, I get my A2C levels checked, and since they're always 6 and under I get that sweet sweet thirty bucks on the copay card. Since we're moved here I haven't participated in it much. I'd forgotten about it until Jim used his copay card for his MRI, and today the insurer gently reminded me to do a full health assessment.

It was a shit show that just made me effing cranky. I did the fifteen minute survey, and my numbers on everything are good, low blood pressure, good A1Cs, good cholesterol levels, zero stroke effects since the stroke two years ago, almost. All of my bad numbers are way down. I've worked at it. I'd lowered my risk assessment numbers from 67 percent at risk (normal number for my age and what I scored five years ago) to 52, well below normal. My weight is down from five years ago a good healthy amount even with a 5 pound COVID nerves gain.

Looking at my great numbers I started getting all these nagging recommendations that I get my asthma better controlled. Like that can happen with Mast cell. Ha! My problems are not going to be helped by an all plant based diet and using my inhaler. It's frustrating when you get all useless information that only works if you have the standard version of illnesses, not the weirder ones.

The other super annoying thing is that while I've been slowly, gradually melting away, lost a ton of weight over eight years, over a third of my body weight, and all they could do was nag me about my weight! The stroke happened because I did Keto for three months! I have discovered I do better with slow and gradual, not quick and crazy. I am a turtle swimming slowly upstream. Better health would help reach the goal. Not having to hide from a pandemic, and getting to go out and be more active would help. I am planning on keeping on keeping on and ignore those attempts to get me to sign up for this or that unhelpful thing. 

The other irksome thing is that they claimed I had high stress levels just because I said on the stress index that I worry about family and COVID. Big whoop. We all do. We're in a strange time. I don't feel stressed out, I know what that feels like, and this is not it. This is normal concern during a pandemic.

This is the why and how a a standardized form is rarely a good thing. People are so many different things that cannot be really quantified with a document with few choices.

Something good did happen in the late afternoon. At NLQ and other places I've talked about some historic forgotten African American sites in Northern Virginia. Today I heard from someone connected several of those places, part of a new group formed to save those places. May be helping them out shortly on fundraising and other fronts. I would hate to see those precious sites disappear into the zillions of cookie cutter suburbs in NoVa.