• Digging for pain and finding a vein

    Whining about your dentist is a blogging stapple. Lucky for you, I’m pro-staple.

    “Are you ok?”

    This is the great rhetorical dental question of our time. I love it.

    No offense to any women dentists out there, but this is the point in the post where I pretend to be something I’m not, and slip into the vernacular of the “real man.”

    I love it because I think it takes some real stones to ask it. Sure, you’re lying prone with sharp – and often powered equipment in your mouth – but they don’t know you from the criminally insane. That question, under the wrong circumstances, could be a real problem.

    Alas, I am not criminally insane, though I am reminded of something Salvador Dali said: “The only difference between a madman and myself is I AM NOT MAD!”

    Back to my dental encounter…

    “Oh yeah. The veins in my neck bulge out like this all the time. My lips and jaw quiver like they have a life of their own sometimes. I have no idea why.”

    Of course, that’s not what came out of my mouth. I was counting on it. I’m non-confrontational by nature. Instead, a series of grunts and seemingly random noises on the low end of the register came out of my mouth (along with a slurry of drool, chemical run-off, and blood). Folks in the biz call it “chair-speak.”

    Although I wonder, have dentists and their minions (aka hygenists) evolved the ability to understand chair-speak? Is it like the way parents learn to understand their children’s early attempts at communication, long before others can? Or is it a more innate ability of the species – like a mother’s ability to interpret a baby’s cry and instantly know what’s wrong.

    Either way, I was obviously not relaxed, and I owed it to the latest quiver in my dentist’s arsenal.

    I don’t know what it’s called. I think of it as “Satan’s Pickax.” Think of a combination tool of discomfort, a Swiss Army Knife of dental torture if you will: a razor-sharp pick, high-pressure washer, and a carpenter’s router. Plus, it also comes with mood music… it wails like a banshee who stole your coach’s wistle from high school phys-ed.

    Good stuff.

    To their credit, they did try swathing my gums with a numbing gel. To their discredit, they used a little extra elbow grease. It reminded me of folks who eat food with “half the calories,” but eat four times as much of the stuff.

    Step right up folks! We’re offering one half the sensitivity while achieving two times the pain!

    Otherwise, it was a routine visit. I don’t need major surgery. In fact I was congratulated on my superior brushing technique – which almost masks the fact I don’t floss enough.

    I’m a big fan of the backhanded compliment, so I can appretiate it when someone works at their craft.

  • Six months of billing futility, revisited

    Something about that call isn’t sitting right with me. I finally got through to my insurance company, only to be told the problem: “we’re getting bills.”

    Now, as some poor shmuck with little more than a family and a mailbox, this sounds like something perfectly resonable to say… if it was born of my lips. As my insurance company – whose sole purpose in the universe is to disburse healthcare dollars for – drum roll please – healthcare, this sounded fishy.

    Hold onto your skull caps frends, I’m not done yet. You see, I wasn’t exactly speaking to my health insurance company. I was speaking to the company with a subcontract for the work with a certain medical specialty. No, this wasn’t an error on my part – we were both on the same medical specialty page. The problem was, the subcontractor didn’t handle claims/billing/money.

    If I had it to do all over, I would have asked a few probing questions – with a pinch of sarcasm for flavor.

    So what do you do when you get a bill? Do you forward it to the correct recipient? Do you notify the Doctor’s office about the error? Do you do both? Do you just ignore it, hoping it will go away? If you don’t process claims, what the hell do you do? What value do you add to my healthcare?

    Alas, I felt cowed, and for no good reason. Maybe it was a case of learned helplessness. Either way, I just said thanks and called my Doctor’s office to let them know what I learned. Of course, I had to leave a message with their billing department. They were on the phone assisting other patients.

    They were assisting with other insurance problems, no doubt.

  • It’s the little surprises that make all the difference

    “Ah… Mr Kauffman? Your insurance company hasn’t paid us since your August visit. You might want to call them.” That was the office staff at one of my many doctors’ offices. We’re pretty tight, seeing as how I’ve been there a lot since August.

    I might want to call them? Does this imply I might not want to call them… that I might just want to pay the bill myself and not go through the hassle? Or is it possible they might want me to just pay the bill, so they won’t have to go through the hassle?

    If you guessed all of the above, you win… a warm feeling in your heart, knowing you’re at least as smart as me. Well, maybe not warm, exactly. Room temperature?

    I’m not sure what this says more about: my doctor’s office or my insurance company. Is health insurance so poorly run in this country that it’s routine to wait six months for payment? Or is the office manager at my doctor’s office REALLY lax with the ‘ole follow-up?

    If this is business as usual, would it really hurt anyone if it was run more like a government?