23 | February | 2013 | thebitterbabe

My doctor’s office calls again: UHC says the Mayo Clinic in Phoenix has no record of me in their files. Well, duh! I haven’t been there yet. Now let’s see if I’ve got this straight: I can’t go there until UHC approves it. UHC can’t approve it until all the requisite information has been filed and a case manager assigned. But I can’t have a case manager until the intake coordinator has entered the case in the system. And the intake coordinator hasn’t entered the case because the hospital where I’m appealing to go has no record of me. I don’t know whether to scream or cry!

[…]

I’m in despair. I think back to last year, when I signed up for early Social Security. It took one phone call. Fifteen minutes max. Everything was loaded into their system and I could look it up online. All the information was there. It was all correct. My checks come like clockwork on the same day every month. I’ve never had one problem. Last year my husband signed up for Medicare. Same experience. No problems, no complaints. This is your government at work. Some bureaucrats know how to get it right.

February 23, 2013

health insurance

From all my reading, I’ve come to the unfortunate conclusion that feeling lonely, scared, and isolated contributes to ill health. It’s like being doubly punished.

Knowing that, I’m trying not to let this health insurance issue get to me, although it’s definitely an issue that makes me feel lonely, scared, and isolated. Like I’ve been thrown on the scrap heap for having a medical issue. Like I’m being punished for being single. Like nobody cares, and I’ll lose every cent I have if I’m hospitalized. Like I’m a target for aggressive, predatory companies that like to throw around the word “God” a lot.

A friend of mine, a freelancer, has some medical issues and said the single biggest negative impact on her health is dealing with health insurance companies.

Another friend of mine, due to the stress of his job, developed a temporary medical problem that then created a health insurance nightmare when the job ended.

I’m taking deep breaths and meditating but the sadness and fear is still breaking through.

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February 23, 2013

irish times

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/weekend/2013/0216/1224330107051.html

More people are separating in Ireland. More live alone. Dating is changing, as are definitions of singlehood. A new ‘Irish Times’ series explores the sometimes lonely, sometimes liberating reality of single life

February 23, 2013

performance

http://gateway-women.com/2013/02/22/healing-the-friendship-gap-between-mothers-and-the-childless/#comments

We need to find a way to open a dialogue between mothers and nomos (not-mothers, my term). To name, describe and domesticate the elephant in the room. If intimacy and honesty are really the same thing, without being honest with each other, friendships become a performance. And then they wither away and die.

February 23, 2013

quick turnarounds

Somehow within a year this went from not enough enrollments:

http://www.arthritistoday.org/news/pre-existing-condition-insurance-arthritis137.php

To closed to further enrollment:

https://www.pcip.gov

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