More insurance insanity. I don’t know if anyone is interested in what I’m writing. It’s all I can think about today. Maybe it’s a good case study. Our insurance situation is so complex that I can’t explain it fully here. The short version is that my wife no longer has a job, so we’ve been using the COBRA law to keep our health insurance with Humana, the insurance company used by her former employer. The COBRA law says that you must be allowed to keep your insurance for 18 months after you leave a job or lose a job.

At one point it seemed that I was going to have to leave Humana and lose my mental health benefits. That’s when I told you that I was trying to figure out how to buy Wellbutrin, the drug I take for depression, online.

This is one of the hard things about trying to figure out insurance. Things change all the time. Jeanene had to break away from our family plan because she needed some yearly examinations. We were worried that if the doctors found anything, she wouldn’t be able to get insurance later, when we have to leave Humana. Technically that’s true for all of us. However, my middle daughter has no other option but to remain with Humana until that coverage runs out. We’ve decided it makes better sense for me to stay on that plan with her and the other two girls. So I’ll have mental health benefits for another year or so. That means I can buy Wellbutrin with a reasonable co-payment.

Now there has been a colossal SNAFU with our insurance company. When Jeanene left Humana in March, they mistakenly cancelled the policy for our entire family. No one told us. We got no cancellation notice. I went to the pharmacy to pick up my prescription two weeks ago and was told that my insurance had been cancelled. I knew a mistake had been made because we’ve never been late with a payment.

As I continue with this story, keep that in mind. We’ve paid these people. They have our money.

You would think this would be a simple matter to fix. I would call Humana and the Humana person would say, “I’m sorry Mr. Atkinson. You’ve paid us. Let me update the computer...done. You’re covered again.”

Only this is the world of insurance in the United States. Even if you pay them, nothing is easy or simple.

You see, with COBRA there is often a third-party involved. In our case, a company called Conexis collects our insurance payment, then notifies Humana that we have paid. This is because most employers don’t want to handle the insurance paperwork for people who no longer work for them. I certainly don’t blame them for that.

In theory, Conexis’ job seems easy enough. We pay them our health insurance premium online. They notify Humana that we have paid and our insurance continues.

Apparently this transaction isn’t so simple.

The first thing we did when we heard our insurance was cancelled was to call Humana. The person we spoke with couldn’t explain anything. She simply said that our insurance had been cancelled back in March. (We've deduced that all of this happened when Jeanene left our family insurance. Humana has never been clear about that.)

“But we’ve been paying all along. We paid for March and April.”

“Well, then Conexis hasn’t been notifying us of those payments. We have no record of them.”

Ah, so it’s the fault of Conexis. We called them with what seemed like a reasonable question. “Why have you been taking our online payments and not notifying Humana to that effect?” They didn’t dispute that we had paid. They said, “But we HAVE been notifying Humana. Humana does this all the time. We notify them, but they don’t update their system. Then your insurance gets cancelled.”

Okay, so it’s Humana’s fault. We called them back.

“No no no,” Humana said. “We have no record that Conexis has contacted us. Conexis does this all the time. You need to contact Conexis and demand that they do an emergency notification update. They will email us a record of your payment, and your insurance will be re-instated in 72 hours.

“72 hours? All of this is done by computer and email but it will take you 72 hours?”

“Sorry,” the Humana person said. “That’s the way the system works.”

So we called Conexis, angry now. They denied that the problem was on their end. “We’ve sent them the update,” they said.

“Okay fine, whatever. Will you just send it again?” They agreed. The Conexis rep said, “You know it will take Humana about 72 hours to get this updated. There’s nothing we can do about that.”

“Yeah, so we heard.”

Four days later I called the pharmacy, hoping to be able to pick up my prescription. I was informed that Humana was still denying that we we had insurance with them. By this time I had run out of Wellbutrin.

We called Conexis once again.

“Well, we notified Humana,” they said defensively, You know it sometimes takes up to 72 hours for the system to update.”

“Yes, so we’ve been told. But it’s been four days. Are you sure you notified them?”

“Absolutely. They’ve been notified of your payment. It’s their fault.”

We called Humana. They denied getting any notification from Conexis. “Call them back and ask them if they sent us an edi form by email. That’s what they’re supposed to send us. Now keep in mind that when we finally do get it, it will be...”

“We know. 72 hours.”

Okay, I think that’s probably enough. You get the picture. Let me go on record and say that I think this whole 72 hours thing is pure bullshit. It gives everyone a nice excuse. The people who are supposed to send notices can just tell you they were sent, but the system hasn’t been updated. You wait three or four days and then are told the notice was never sent. Do you see how this can drag on for weeks? In our case, 2 weeks.

AND ALL THIS TIME, THEY HAD OUR MONEY!

It’s funny, at times I felt like I hadn’t paid them. I felt like I was asking these people to do me a favor. And that’s how a lot of the people at Humana and Conexis talk to you. Like this is somehow your fault. We’ve paid them thousands of dollars over the last half a year, and this is how they treat us?

Meanwhile I was out of Wellbutrin and my daughter, whose medication is much more critical, was down to two days supply.

You know, I had been wondering if I really needed to be on Wellbutrin. When you’re on a medication for depression, sometimes you wonder what would happen if you just stopped taking it. I found out. I’ll tell you about that tomorrow. It’s a whole story of its own.

For today, let me say that Jeanene and I dedicated Monday and Tuesday to getting this worked out. Two educated adults, determined and intelligent, working diligently to get to the bottom of things, took two entire days to get one company to notify another company that we had paid them two weeks ago.

It’s insane, I tell you. Insanity. Do you know how we solved this problem? We took names and notes. We stopped asking if “they” had sent things and demanded to know who sent them, when, and to what email address. If we talked to someone we found out their name and their phone extension. If that person said, “This will be done in an hour or so,” in an hour or so we called them back. Every time. We badgered them and would not go away. With both of us tag-teaming on the phones, it took two full days for Humana to update our records to show that we had indeed paid them two weeks before.

This morning at 11:00 am, our insurance was reinstated. I drove straight to the Walgreens Pharmacy, got my medication, and took a dose. It will take a few days for this medication to get back into my system, but at least I have medication for the next month.

So what actually happened? There’s no way to tell for sure. We think that when Humana mistakenly cancelled our family policy, they notified Conexis but Conexis did not tell us, and they continued to take our money. This is one of the crazy things about the system. If you are one day late with a payment, alarms go off up and down the computer network. Everyone from Humana to Walgreens immediately knows that your insurance has lapsed. On the other hand, if they cancel your policy by mistake, somehow you can continue to make payments online and no one notices or says anything. If I hadn’t had to buy medication, how long do you suppose Conexis would have continued to take our money in spite of the fact that our policy had been cancelled?

I’m guessing they would have taken every penny until one of us got sick and found out in the emergency room that we had no insurance.

Note: The reason this isn't criminal is that the insurance company agrees that when you finally get it worked out, you are covered retroactively. So if one of us had gotten sick during this time, we would have eventually been reimbursed. So legally, they are fine. In the meantime, people who need medicine run out while they get jerked around by these companies.

One last thing.

Our next payment is due April 30th. We’ll pay them before the due date. However, if there is any mistake on their end, if Conexis does not notify Humana, or if Humana gets the notification but does not update their system, our policy will be cancelled. When you're on COBRA, they cancel you the day after your payment is due. There is no grace. If anything goes wrong, we’ll be doing this all over again.

The good news is, we understand the system now, and we have a bunch of names, phone numbers, and email addresses. If we have any trouble, I bet we can get it worked out in, I don't know, 72 hours or so.

rlp

The letter begins as follows:

RE: Your letter, received April Fools' Day

Dear Monster Lawyers,

Let me begin by stating, without equivocation, that I have no interest whatsoever in infringing upon any intellectual property belonging to Monster Cable. Indeed, the less my customers think my products resemble Monster's, in form or in function, the better.

It gets better. And, with the power of Google and blogs, perhaps this letter will become well known and used as a resource by any of the small companies that Monster Cable tries to bully in the future.

Background here
Letter here

Enjoy

rlp

I have to point to some excellent writing that I've found recently around the blog world. I haven't mentioned this much, but I work with Christian Century on a theological blog network that we've started. Take a look at the four pieces featured today:

Larry Vaughan, wounded ex-pastor turned mental health professional blew me away with his last two pieces. This guy is a SERIOUSLY talented writer. You don't want to miss him. Adam Copeland actually lowered a coffin into a grave during a funeral in Scotland. Why did we stop doing that here? And Christopher Breedlove tells us the story behind a Pulitzer prize winning photograph.

Finally, Carl Holmes reveals the secret behind some mysterious flowers growing in front of a church in India.

Great stuff.

rlp

Permanent links to the CCblogs pieces

Larry Vaughan 1 and 2
Adam Copeland
Christopher Breedlove

Insurance Update:
First, a quick thank you to everyone who had suggestions for buying Wellbutrin online. I have a number of good leads, and I’m sure I’ll find something that works. Looks like any number of Canadian sites sell a month’s worth of my meds for $60 to $100. I’ll be working on finding the one to use today.

Again, thanks to everyone for your concern, suggestions, and thoughts.

Retreat News:
Regarding the Franciscan retreats that I wrote about recently. Here are the three dates. Tim and I looked carefully at the makeup of people who might want to come. We briefly considered having a retreat just for people who do not identify as Christians. But, as we thought more about that, we asked, “Why?” There wasn’t a good answer to that question.

So the retreat dates are as follows.

---June 6-8
---July 11-13
---August 8-10 (Clergy Retreat)

The first two weekends are open to anyone who wants to come. Clergy, laity, agnostic, don’t know who you are, you have your own religion that you made up in 1987...anyone.

The third weekend will be a clergy retreat. And I think we won’t define what we mean by clergy. So if you consider yourself to be clergy, whether Christian or other, you’re invited to the third weekend.

THIS IS IMPORTANT: Don’t get a plane ticket yet. I’ll have details up by tomorrow with registration information, a tentative schedule, and some other information.

Paul Soupiset has a set of pictures from our first Franciscan retreat. I was at SXSW that weekend. Grrr! This will give you a feel for how we will be together on these weekends.

Animals at our church:

Deer by the front porch - Sunday morning

Animals and children keep us honest at church. Or perhaps I should say they do not let us forget who we are, nor nature of the world we occupy. There are lots of critters around our church, being in the woods as we are. Their behavior may or may not be convenient to us.

Buzzard on the Sign

Yes, nothing says welcome to our church quite like a buzzard hanging over the church sign on a Sunday morning. The picture is rather blurry. It was taken at a distance. Buzzards are extremely skittish, and it’s hard to get close to them. I’ve decided to call this particular buzzard Tertullian. Not that I can pick him out of a crowd fluttering around a carcass.

I did notice attendance was very low on that Sunday. Do you think there might be a connection?

Spider on the Guest Book

Or, if our buzzard sign doesn’t frighten you off, perhaps the little card inviting you to sign our visitors book will give you pause.

Maybe I should just hang a sign over the door that says, “Abandon hope all ye who enter here.”

Raccoon Buffet

Then there are the raccoons. Eight generations of local raccoons have decided that our dumpster is their own personal buffet. We throw the refuse from our church meals away. They break in, feast all night, drag trash out of the dumpster, and strew it about the parking lot. Some Sundays, if I pull into the parking lot well before dawn, my headlights reveal the lid of the dumpster raising slightly and glowing eyes staring back at me. I hit the gas and speed wildly toward the dumpster, laughing as they dive over the edge and head for the safety of the woods.

I love the raccoons. They make a mess, but we are are the ones who have intruded upon their world.

rlp

I need some help from anyone out there who knows about buying drugs online. Here’s the situation:

Some months ago I wrote about our situation with health insurance. My wife left her job, and we foolishly thought we’d be able to get insurance. After all, we felt like we were pretty healthy people.

That’s when we found out the truth. If you work for a company with group insurance, you’ve got it made. As long as you stay employed and insured, the insurance companies have to cover you, even if you have pre-existing conditions. If you lose your job you have something like 60 days to find another one with insurance benefits and jump onto their group policy. That new policy must cover you and your family with all of your pre-existing conditions.

However, people who are self employed, disabled, unemployed, laid off, or work for a company without health care benefits are on their own. Being on your own is not a good thing. You’re at the mercy of the insurance companies. They can turn you down for any reason or limit your coverage if they even suspect you might have a health issue.

And believe me, they will call your doctor and found out everything. The people you deal with when you try to get individual health insurance are paid to find reasons to turn you down. That’s their job.

Unfortunately, every company we contacted turned down me and our middle daughter Shelby. Me because I take Wellbutrin. Shelby because she had some emotional troubles and spent some days in a psych unit in 2007. She was diagnosed with bi-polar disorder and put on medication. She’s done wonderfully ever since, and we’re thankful to have had that time at the psych unit. It saved her life. (She’s fine with me telling you this)

In desperation we contacted a health insurance specialist who explained things to us. “Shelby is uninsurable,” he said. “Forget about her. She’ll never get health insurance.”

“Can’t she get some kind of insurance that wouldn’t cover her for any mental health issues?”

“Nope. She’s not going to get any insurance of any kind as long as she’s taking her medication.”

“That puts us in a hard place,” I said. “If she stops taking that medicine she’ll fall back into that horrible state that she was in. The medicine helps her.”

“I know it,” he said. “But that’s the way it is. You best just forget about her being able to get insurance. Put it out of your mind. No insurance company will touch her with a ten foot pole. You’ll need to keep her on your wife’s old plan with COBRA until that runs out in 18 months. I know it’s expensive, but after that she’ll be eligible for the Texas pool for the uninsurable. But she has to exhaust every other possibility before they will take her, so keep her on COBRA until they kick you off.”

“As for you, Gordon, I know an insurance company that will probably take you. I’ll have to talk to the underwriter, but I can help her understand your situation. You’re not in counseling, are you?”

“No. I’d like to be. Can’t really afford it now that COBRA insurance costs us like $1000 a month!”

“Thank God for that. If you were taking Wellbutrin AND in counseling, I couldn’t help you. That’s the kiss of death.”

“Yeah, but doesn’t counseling actually help people who are depressed? I mean, isn’t that actually a good way for them to get better?”

“Doesn’t matter. The insurance companies don’t like it. They don’t like the sound of someone in counseling AND on medication. It makes it sound like you’re a high risk person.”

“Do you know I’ve never been in the hospital since I was born? And I’ve only missed two days sick at work in 18 years.”

He didn’t look up from his papers. “That doesn’t matter.”

“Now Gordon, understand that if I can get you covered - IF I can - it won’t be with any mental health benefits. That’s over for you. I think I can get you health insurance, but anything having to do with a psychiatrist or any medications like Wellbutrin, well, you’re going to have to pay for those yourself from now on.”

I swallowed hard. “Okay.”

Here's the part where I could use your help:

Does anyone out there know anything about buying drugs online?

I’m about out of Wellbutrin and will have to purchase my first batch myself. I found out that one month’s supply of Wellbutrin is $475 at our local pharmacy.

Yeah, right. I mean, isn’t that just laughable? It’s a handful of little white pills. How is that $475? I’ll tell you how. The drug companies try to soak the insurance companies for money since the insurance companies have to pay. That in part fuels the insurance companies' fears about getting involved with people like my family. Since they have to pay for all the people with group insurance, they are especially fearful about individuals. Again, you’re fine if you have group insurance with a company, but God help you if you don’t have insurance that covers medication, and you have to pay for it yourself.

You don’t even want to know how much Shelby’s medication would cost us. My gosh, it’s not like these pills are made in outer space and flown in on the Space Shuttle.

I’ve heard that you can buy drugs online at a discount from Canada or wherever. I tried to look online, but I have found that the online drug industry is filled with con-artists, counterfeit drugs, and other illegal activities. But I hear there are some legitimate places.

I have to find a place to get my medication at a reasonable price. Does anyone out there have any experience in negotiating the rather frightening world of online drug sales?

Let me know. I have to figure something out pronto, or else I just stop taking this medication. I can’t tell you how much I’d love to stop, but I backed off of it experimentally a few months ago and it wasn’t a good thing.

Waiting to hear from someone....

rlp

I've written rather extensively about my struggles with depression. I’m unhappy about needing Wellbutrin. I’m even a little embarrassed about it. I feel suspicious about the diagnosis process in general. But I can’t argue with the profound difference it has made in my life. I’m a better husband and father with a little help from Wellbutrin.

I didn’t want to, but I did. And it helped. I don’t know that I would have done anything different, but it would have been nice to have known that by taking those medications, I was putting my ability to get health insurance at risk.

Well, I can tell already that I need to follow my last post with some words of explanation. You’d think I’d learn to predict when things I write will cause anger and hurt feelings. I can’t. I guess every writer is myopic in this way. If my words hurt someone’s feelings or insulted them, I’m sorry about that.

Because someone asked, yes there was a first piece, which was more angry. I suppose that was my own way of working some things out.

I consider what I’ve written to be in the spirit of a political cartoon. I have nothing against Catholicism. Heck, I’m a huge fan of Saint Francis, Thomas Merton, and Henry Nouwen. My artwork on this site is done by a Catholic brother. As a protestant, and a rather low-church one at that, I confess that the opulence of the papacy is beyond my comprehension. But I’ve not written about that.

But I do have a problem with the pope’s decision to go forward with such a public baptism. I mean, what is so special about this man? How many people does the pope baptize? Why was he chosen and why was this done in such a public forum? If the man wants to become a Christian, that could have been taken care of in the way that it happens 99.999% of the time. In a local church and not in front of the cameras.

I consider this satirical piece to be speaking against blatant proselytizing between religions. I’ve written about this before. I think the amount of violence that has historically taken place between Christians and Muslims and Jews is shameful. These three religions, all of whom claim Abraham as a father, need to learn to respect each other. We are moving into a new world. There are new challenges ahead.

I believe trying to convert each other is “Old World” behavior and it needs to stop.

This man apparently wasn’t a practicing Muslim. And he wanted to become a Christian. Fine. Wonderful. That’s the free choice of any human being. But why would the pope go out of his way to make this a public spectacle? Why tweak the already sensitive noses of Muslims at a time like this? Someone in the comments suggested it might have been a reply to Osama Bin Laden’s recent statements. I certainly hope not. I certainly hope the pope doesn’t stoop to such a thing.

But this public baptism of a Muslim indicates the growing irrelevancy of the pope. That’s the point behind the symbolic gibberish Latin and poking fun of his opulent clothing. The pope seems out of touch with reality on this issue.

Major leaders of world religions need to be a part of the solution, not a part of the problem.

However, now that I read this with some distance from it, my teasing satire went too far. Ironically, that comes not from any sense of Protestant-Catholic division in me, but from a lack of it. I think we're all Christians. And I feel free to speak out when my own spiritual family does something like this. For the severity of my satire and for the feelings that were hurt, I apologize.

But I did write it, so I suppose I'll leave it as it is and simply take the heat for it. That's part of the world of blogging. People pounding away at their keyboards, expressing all sorts of things. Sometimes we do it well, sometimes we go too far, sometimes we don't go far enough. From behind the keyboard, it can be hard to make the right call.

rlp

Paul Soupiset has a video online of our ongoing work on a prayer labyrinth at the back of our church property. It should definitely be done before anyone arrives this summer for the retreats. The video has a few people in it you've read about here.

Paul and his daughters, who narrate it.

My youngest daughter Lillian is the one with glasses who shoves her face in the camera and tries her best to sound stupid. She's the one I wrote about in those two bifocals pieces so long ago.

My middle daughter Shelby is the one who runs at the camera.

Chloe is practically all grown up now and wearing the pink rubber boots.

Tim, aka Tom, is the man in black coming down the path. His daughter is wearing the party hat. She spent the night at our house that weekend. I think she wore that hat non-stop from Friday through Monday.

And I, dear readers, star as the Grinch who stole the joy from all the children who were laboring so hard on the labyrinth. I really was embarrased when I saw this. There are all these flower children, dressed in such unique and cool ways, out there working away. And you're thinking, "Wow, this might be the coolest church EVER." Then you see the pastor dressed in the most uptight, "white guy" clothes imaginable, marching in to spoil the party. So then you think, "No, it's pretty much like every church I've ever been to."

Sorry. Sorry everyone. Carry on. Please do ignore the dreary man in the pastel shirt! ;-)

What I really like about this is our prayer path through the woods and the labyrinth at the back has been built almost exclusively by children. Very nice. It looks rather brown and dreary right now, but in a month or so, everything back there will be lush and green.

rlp