I’m on hold with Empire Blue Cross Blue Shield, providers of the health insurance I bought on the New York State of Health Marketplace.  This second hold muzak features a piano and a jazzy guitar, but it is a very short loop.  It has played many times so far.

The first hold music, the one the robotic female voice kept interrupting to thank me for continuing to hold to, was obnoxious for the entire fifteen minute wait.  This music is better, but it’s starting to wear on me after ten minutes.

The reason I am holding again (with no robot thanking me over and over for my patience, I note sourly) is that the number on the back of my card connected me, mistakenly, to Stacey, who, while sympathetic, had no details of my account.  She seemed mystified by my fairly straight-forward billing question and finally said “Oh!  You’re in New York…  I’ll get you a NY representative who can help you.”  

It was my turn to be mystified, and I told Stacey so.  She confirmed that I’d dialed the right number from the back of my card, and promised to stay on the line until the NY person picked up.  She readily sympathized with my problems with the ACA.  It sounded like she had her own, and has spent many a long day (for minimum wage, apparently) listening to the details of the problems of others with Obamacare.  I may have pushed her sympathy with a nonchalant, but acidly snide, reference to the insurance industry insider who was the primary author of the ACA and who’d made her past and current bosses at Aetna very happy while in the government.

Stacey didn’t hold the line until the NY person picked up, and though the muzak has changed to another equally annoying ten second pseudo-jazzy loop, I am starting to get the feeling I am in corporate hold purgatory and that nobody is going to pick up the line.  After all, it is now going on fifteen minutes, this second plague of blood-pressure raising muzak.  It actually turns out to have been reassuring, that female drone telling me how important my business is to them and thanking me for my patience.

Just as I am about to give up hope, Stacey herself comes back on the line, tells me the information is pretty much universal from one state to the next, and, from her swivel chair in a cubicle in Virginia, pulls up my account.  Unfortunately, until the doctor submits a bill and the insurance company reviews it and sends the patient an explanation of benefits form setting out what the patient is responsible to pay, there is no way of knowing whether the visit will cost only $50 to the insured party– that would be the nominal co-pay– or several hundred dollars.  It all depends what the doctor has agreed to charge Empire and what Empire will then inform the patient is owed to pay for service, until the $1,750 of the deductible is paid down by the insured party.  Stacey agrees that it’s a shame there’s no way to know the cost before you visit a doctor for the first time.  

Obama’s proper punishment should be to have his health care at the mercy of the ACA and to wait on hold, listening to this muzak loop, for the remainder of his term, as his blood pressure climbs and nobody is there thanking him for continuing to hold.  On the other hand, Stacey was quick to say, when I expressed disappointment in the president, that Obama had nothing to do with this, even though a public option would have, admittedly, been the most sensible way to resolve the crisis in the obscenely profit-driven business of treating American sickness.  USA!  USA!

We are number five worldwide in executions, by the way, after China, Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia and squeaking in ahead of Sudan, Somalia and Yemen.  Not surprisingly, the Lone Star State accounted for 41% of U.S. executions last year.  Hang ’em high, boys.   USA!   USA!!!!

But there I go again, being snide and negative instead of looking on the bright side (as Stacey did, mentioning the $15/hr. minimum wage in Seattle, as we searched for a reason to be optimistic about our nation’s future) and realizing how lucky I am to be doing what I love, even if there is no payment involved, except, perhaps on the karmic account.  It’s true.  I’m going to be happy.  USA!  USA!!!!!