If you haven’t eaten in a while, I encourage to TiVo whatever you were going to watch and make a sandwich before you read this.

As you know, I was never a fan of Obama Care. I had no empirical basis for not liking Obama Care, I just knew that I did not like it. I have no empirical basis for not liking beets either, I just know that I don’t like them.

For years, people have been telling me to try beets. So, I tried them. And do you know what I discovered? I really do not like beets. Full disclosure, I don’t also like turnips.

Now that we are all on the same page regarding the nuances of my vegetable husbandry, perhaps we should get back to my issues with Obama Care.

So, instead of just whinging about Obama Care, I thought I would take the same approach I took with the beets. Try it. And then complain.

Which I did. And I am doing that now—complaining, that is.

To set the stage, I received an MBA from a pretty good school. While I’m not always the smartest guy in the room, in some rooms I hold my own rather well.

For those of you who are familiar with the television show M.A.S.H., in one episode, Hawkeye Pierce told Radar, “In war, there are two rules; Rule 1—men die, and Rule 2—doctors cannot change Rule 1.”

With Obama Care there are also two rules, Rule 1—there are policies and procedures, and Rule 2—only God, or a Republican Congress can change Rule 1.

More than 12,000,000 people have Obama Care.  That number is about equal to the number of policies and procedures that define Obama Care. As a former mathematician, I know enough about math to be able to quickly calculate the amount of the tip if you and I went to lunch.

I also know that the branch of mathematics called combinatorics would state that the likelihood of a single Obama Care recipient from a sample size of twelve million people being able to comply with twelve million policies and procedures being able to successfully navigate the morass of policies and procedures is zero. Especially if their only option of successfully navigating those policies and procedures is to do so through a customer service structure that was outsourced by CMS.

Obama Care’s customer service function is outsourced to General Dynamics.  General Dynamics has four main business segments: Marine Systems, Combat Systems, Information Systems Technology, and Aerospace. General Dynamics also manufactures the Stinger, the world’s best surface-to-air missile.

In its spare time, General Dynamics also runs the customer service function for Obama Care. To paraphrase Lewis Carroll, things just get curiouser and curiouser.

Ones’ ability to be insured under Obama Care sort of comes down to what the definition of ‘is’ is. To the Clintonites reading this, I implore you to give me the benefit of the doubt for a few seconds instead of creating a Voodoo doll in my image. If you choose to move forward and euthanize me using the doll, please don’t make the doll look like I borrowed Biden’s hair transplants.

I have a small, albeit, really good healthcare consulting company which focuses on consumerism and patient and customer experience. As such, I decided to see what the marketplace for health insurance looks like for the twelve million Americans who decided to purchase health insurance through Obama Care. I thought it only fair that if I was going to continue to compare being insured under Obama Care to eating beets that I should understand the Obama Care consumer experience.

I discovered that the sycophants at the General Dynamics CMS Obama Care call center and I have agreed to disagree about the meaning of the word ‘deadline.’ I discovered this fact during a two-hour and thirteen-minute phone call.

“You had to submit this form by the deadline, August, 29,” the supervisor told me. The first thirty minutes of my call was with someone who was not a General Dynamics Obama Care call center supervisor.

“And when does your system show that I submitted the form?” I asked. The General Dynamics Obama Care customer experience call center supervisor put me on hold. When he returned he told me that the center received my form August 29. However—and this is significant, however—it took us a few days to process your form. We processed your form on September 1, which means you missed the deadline. What the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.

I was momentarily grateful that I was speaking with a supervisor.

In his attempt to explain why I did not have insurance, even though I had submitted the required form prior to the deadline, he told me that I needed to reapply and that I needed to resubmit the form.  The same form that I had submitted by the required date.

I told him that he had just confirmed that he had the form he was requesting that I resubmit. He said he no longer had the form because although my form was submitted prior to the deadline, that although he was viewing on his screen, it had been “shredded by the system.” My electronic form, the one at which he was looking, was shredded.

There are times that being the smartest person in the room, that being the smartest person on the call is worth nothing. That is what happens when people who are interested in helping you are forced to comply with nonsensical policies and procedures. I fully expected him to tell me, “I can help you purchase a Stinger Missile, but I cannot help you solve your problem of buying Obama Care simply because you submitted the information we require by the date we required it.

I realize how nonsensical this seems. To those who somehow navigated Obama Care’s policies and procedures and who are now insured, you are now the smartest person in the room.

I am not. Instead of continuing to whinge, I have decided to go to lunch. I am thinking of ordering a beet salad.

The Real Portlandia

Portland, Oregon; where moss grows on moss.

If you have ever seen the movie Apollo 13, you may recall the scene when the capsule containing the three astronauts passes behind the moon where the sun is no longer visible. Once a year, Portland has its own Apollo 13 moment.  The sun disappears, not to be seen again for five or six months. Did I mention that is rains here? I Googled to find plans to build an ark.

I wrote to Portland’s mayor and I proposed that he create an annual city day of mourning to commemorate the last day that Portlandiers see the sun, the day we put away our sunglasses.

Don’t get me wrong, I adore Portland. There is almost an antediluvian feel with regard to some of the unintentional entertainment value of the city. It is not unusual to see the machinations of Portland play out like a Lifetime movie.

There is a female author in Portland whose self-published works include, How to Murder Your Husband, Girl Most Likely To, and The Wrong Husband. In an interview, the author, describing her work, said, “Which means my husband has learned to sleep with one eye open.” The police arrested her last week for—say it with me—murdering her husband. Her yet to be published work, which she will have plenty of time to write, should be titled, Forty Years in Jail.

There is a certain catharsis that comes from writing. An even greater catharsis that comes from murdering someone using ones and zeroes. I know that of which I speak—I know that was a bad sentence, but those of you who have been reading my blog for a while know I am not an astute grammarian—because I’ve written two novels both of which gave me several cathartic moments.  But I have never exercised the catharsis in real life. Yet.

I enjoy watching true crime stories on Discovery ID simply because after watching the show I feel smarter than I did before I watched the show. A spouse dies.  The police discover that the surviving spouse purchased a seven-figure life insurance policy on the deceased spouse the day of the death. Dumb and dumber.  It’s not exactly a who-done-it.

Segue.

Too many providers are trying to build watches to understand consumerism. Unfortunately, none of them have any experience building watches.

The neo-watch-builders have reset their call center IVR to the following:

1. If you want a single payer system, press ‘1’ and your call will be transferred to Bernie Sanders
2. If you want to single payer system today, press ‘2’ to be transferred to Canada’s immigration system
3. If you believe in global warming, press ‘3’ to be transferred to Barbara Streisand
4. If you want to do something other than schedule an appointment, press ‘4’, click your heels together three times, and chant, there’s no place like home
5. If you went to our website to do anything other than finding out what hours our gift shop is open, press whatever you wish because we can’t help you
6. If you went to our website to donate, press ‘5’ and we will send someone to your home to pick up your check
7. If you want to speak with a clinician, press ‘6’ to listen to the recording that says someone will get back to you within 2-3 days
8. If you do not want to press ‘6’, hang up and go to the Minute Clinic
9. If you clicked ‘contact us’ on our website, repeat step 7
10. If you want to solve this problem, press ‘7’ and you will be connected to the Senior Hallway Monitor

Whether you are a provider or a payer, nobody ever wants to call you. They call because they have no other option.  Did I mention that I am the Senior Hallway Monitor?

There are solutions that are better than trying to learn to build watches.  If you are interested in learning what time it is, call me.