“I’ve tried everything and he won’t leave!” sighed Katelynn Madison, 23, a health insurance claims processor. “It’s like he can’t take the hint. We don’t want to be with you anymore! Why is that so hard to understand?”
Madison is proudly part of a byzantine system that stops Americans from getting medicine by denying over 50 million insurance claims per year. A rising star in the industry, she recently won “Manipulator of the Month” for telling a patient to fax a notarized copy of their complete medical history to the office, despite not having a fax machine or even really knowing what that is.
“We’ve tried everything. We’ve ignored his calls for weeks on end. We’ve kept sending him more bills to try to confuse him. Sometimes I even randomly send him bills for medications that he paid nine months ago. He just won’t take no for an answer.”
The anonymous patient Madison is referring to is one of the 37 million diabetics in America. Since diabetes is considered a pre-existing condition, it’s Madison’s job to make their lives as miserable as possible until they give up advocating for their health.
Last month she took the devious step of making the patient’s doctor fill out a prior authorization form, which is really just more paperwork, to prove that the doctor actually meant for the patient to have the prescription the doctor already wrote.
“Look, at the end of the day my job is to make my company money. That’s it. And if we have to insure sick people, we’re going to make them cover the entire bill. I just wish people would understand that and stop trying to contact me.”