Health care in America: U.S. loves the emergency room

Listen, folks.  We all pay for everyone’s health care.  This garbage about emergency rooms treating you if you’re not covered, as if they’re doing it for free, is nonsense and  inaccurate. 

The emergency room may treat you (especially if it’s a public one–tax dollars, you know–but may not if it’s private), but they will send you a bill and it will be for thousands of dollars.  Yes, you may be able to beg your way to some sort of relief.  But we all pay for that relief through our taxes and higher health care and insurance costs.

The emergency room is for emergencies, not care of chronic illnesses like cancer and diabetes.  So instead of advocating early treatment and prevention, this is a “system” that rewards proscrastination and reactivity.

It’s so shortsighted (and typically American) to operate on a system of I’ve -got-insurance-who-cares-about-you? and just-put-off-care-till-you’re-desperate-and-the-emergency-room-will-take-care-of-you.  And shortsightedness, in all of life, almost always costs more than its alternatives.

Company run health care and mammography woes

All this hoopla over the new task force recommendations on mammography.  This is what you get when your health culture is tied to insurance companies and “wisdom” dispensed from the medical establishment.

Ooh, companies can give their people more access to health care if they want.  Let’s all bow down and worship them and maybe they’ll grant us the favor of letting doctors experiment on us some more.

Bank of America humbug continues

When my previously mentioned friend with the Bank of America account called the Department of Labor to get the check taken care of, the DOL was appalled that Skank was putting the onus on him to get the matter taken care of. 

Then, when he went into the bank to have the affidavit notarized that he had to get from the DOL, he had DOL on the line asking the BOA rep to fax the item over and get it taken care of on the spot.  Oh no, the Skank employee replied.  We don’t fax to anywhere but other Skank offices.

To top it off, DOL dropped the ball a couple of times too.  First, when my friend called them and talked to the department with the power to send the affidavit and get the check reissue taken care of, they turned the matter over to the wrong person and it didn’t initially get done. 

Then, once they got the fax with the notarized affidavit (faxed from a company across the street at my friend’s expense because Skank couldn’t be bothered with rectifying a mistake their own [subcontractor's] machine had made), they turned it over to a ”new employee” who promptly screwed up the task.  So yesterday my friend not only didn’t get the reissued unemployment check–I said unemployment, as in no money coming in, you know?–but didn’t even get his allotted one.  So that set off another round of phone calls that my stressed friend had to take care of.

But at least the Department of Labor was gracious and cooperative.  While Skank of America justs keeps pocketing the dough and giving just enough customer service to get by. 

Why should they care about the little guy who has his money in their bank when they’ve got all those big corporate customers to keep happy?

Bank of America at it again

I have tried time and again to get my friend with the Skank of America account to switch to another bank.  As much as he hates Skank, he has always complained about how much trouble it would be to switch.  It’s not enough that they upped his interest rate on his credit card for no reason other than that they felt like it (oh, yeah, “profitability;” bank-speak for “you’re such a good customer how may we screw you today?”) and that they have nickel and dimed him to death with fees.

Now, their ATM has eaten a check he deposited from a government agency, no less–his unemployment check–and after initially crediting him with the money while they “investigate,” have sent him another letter claiming that, even though the transaction was recorded in the ATM, they still can’t find the check and so they are reversing the credit.  Go get the “person” who wrote you the check to stop payment and issue you another, they say. 

You see, Bank of America doesn’t handle its own ATMs.  The machines are outsourced and Skank won’t even tell the customer who they’re outsourced to.  A little accountability issue, if you ask me.

So, even when the check was sitting there in the machine, a Skank employee couldn’t just walk over and get it.  Oh no, that would be too easy.  So near and yet so far away.

Good old corporate-welfare recipient Bank of America.

Comcast, ugh

With all the times I have been tempted to write about Comcast, I can’t believe I’m finally now just doing it.   I can hardly contain my revulsion long enough to write about these scam artists.  And now they want to cement a deal with NBC.

Here’s just a free association smattering of things I despise about this company:

I hate how they don’t have any real competition.  Oh, there’s Dish Network and DirecTV, but they come with their own baggage–like contracts and service terms the length of a novel that could scare away all but the hardiest of souls.   And I know that there are some other things in the works, with AT&T and Verizon and fiber optics.  But cable–the most widespread, accessible form of TV programming for the masses beyond the network airwaves–means Comcast.

I hate how they draw you in with promotional offers as a “new customer”–like when you move to a new area or somehow otherwise manage to get that coveted classification by pulling the right strings like some people do–and then screw you over when you’ve been with them for years.  When you get them on the phone they rattle off a bunch of options that you can’t keep up with, and what they offer you never seems to match what their web site or printed information shows.  I hate how you can’t get a package with just what you want.

I hate how they’re liars, pure and simple.  This past year they published a promotional Major League Baseball package for a certain amout per month.  When my housemate signed up–speaking to at least two different customer service reps along the way and being given the same figure–he was ultimately sent a bill charging the higher, “newer,” promotional price.  My friend had to go through a series of phone calls to CSRs and supervisors  over the course of the summer in order to eventually be granted the amount he had been quoted in the first place.  I have seen Comcast do this sort of thing time and time again. 

I hate how they jack up their rates faster than you can say “monopoly.”  How many digits is that in their percentage inflation rate now?

And now they’re trying to enact a deal with NBC, so they’ll be even more powerful than they already are.

I despise Scumcast.