# Nannygrams from my health insurance company **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [July 22, 2008, 1:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nannygrams-from-my-health-insurance-company/457360 "2008-07-22T13:01:48Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![VunderBob](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/839c29/32.png) [@VunderBob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VunderBob)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2008, 1:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nannygrams-from-my-health-insurance-company/457360/1 "2008-07-22T13:01:48Z")
Yesterday, I recieved a letter in the mail informing me that through their tracking efforts, I’m taking my cholesterol medication 80% of the prescribed time. This pissed me off severely, because it’s not the first time they’ve foisted their invasive bullshit on me. For better or worse, I’ve written them the following response, sanitized to protect the guilty: > [@](#): > > VunderBob > The VunderLair > > Dahed Cheez > Pharmacy Director > Big Blue Health Insurance > Somewherein OH > > Ref: HMG #37099985 > > 22 July 2008 > Dear Mr. Cheez and minions: > > With the benefit of 25 years of career experience, I know the value a well thought, succinct, and diplomatic business letter, versus an expletive laden diatribe. For you, I’ll make an exception. > > It must be that time of year where some empty corporate suit decides that your clients are all slack jawed morons who don’t know item one about their health. > > Last year about this time, Big Blue Health Insurance sent me a no-shit inch high stack of glossy propaganda about diabetes. Since you clowns had just figured out I had it, you assumed I had just been diagnosed, too. Naturally, because this was all new, I was itching for all information I could handle, and wanted in on some cockamamie tracking program that only you administered. It mattered not a whit that I’ve been diagnosed for many years, participated in several clinical trials, track my own information, and do everything my doctor wants me to do. Nah. I’m an idiot, and I need nanny-state health care. > > This year’s attack on my intelligence is even better. I received the subject letter in the mail today, announcing that by your tracking efforts and the skillz of your crack IT department, I’m taking my cholesterol medication 80% of the prescribed time. > > Maybe I am, and maybe not. Perhaps you don’t have the big picture, and you are not accounting for exercise, diet, AND THE FACT THAT DESPITE MY COMPLIANCE RATE, MY DOCTOR IS COMPLETELY HAPPY WITH MY BLOOD FAT LEVELS. > > That would be too easy. You have to keep those Perl script kiddies busy after all, so you have them do a database search, find out that I live in East Buttcrack North Carolina, whip out your copy of \*Demographics for Dummies \* to determine that everyone in the county is an uneducated redneck who can’t spell hyperlipidemia, and insult me bulk rate. > > I think it’s time to hand you a few clues: > > • I take great pride in knowing all I can about my diagnosed conditions. When I want information I don’t have, I’ll ask for it. > > • I’m in a position where I can directly observe the effects of not taking care of myself. Did you do CPR at 4 AM yesterday (21 July) on an old lady who let her health go to pot? I did, and believe me, there’s no greater motivation for taking care of myself. > > • My wife is the only one who can get away with nagging me. I will not accept it from a corporation embracing the health care model of the Socialist Worker’s Paradise of California. I did not ask for this ‘service’, and I do not want it. > > • My medication adherence is a matter between my doctor and myself. Butt the fuck out of my business. > > Very testily, > > VunderBob ---
**Author:** ![unstrung](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/a698b9/32.png) [@unstrung](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/unstrung)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2008, 1:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nannygrams-from-my-health-insurance-company/457360/2 "2008-07-22T13:08:11Z")
Wow, dude. You have some serious ranting skills. Good on you. ---
**Author:** ![Sublata](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/7cd45c/32.png) [@Sublata](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sublata)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2008, 1:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nannygrams-from-my-health-insurance-company/457360/3 "2008-07-22T13:14:05Z")
Sounds like you haven’t been taking your lithium, you naughty boy! 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Tupug\_Anachi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7993a0/32.png) [@Tupug\_Anachi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tupug_Anachi)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2008, 1:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nannygrams-from-my-health-insurance-company/457360/4 "2008-07-22T13:24:13Z")
Ah, ha! Another minion for the army of the **MIDDLE-CLASS REVOLUTION**! Preach it, Brutha! ---
**Author:** ![Risha](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/5fc32e/32.png) [@Risha](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Risha)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2008, 1:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nannygrams-from-my-health-insurance-company/457360/5 "2008-07-22T13:56:26Z")
Bizarrely enough, just this morning I was reading [an article](http://junkfoodscience.blogspot.com/2008/07/will-they-be-told-truth.html) that is directly related. By the way: Dear Insurance Company Of Mine, I had horrible bronchitis (the most miserable seven days of my life, and I _have_ chronic bronchitis) two years ago that landed me in the ER when I suddenly couldn’t breathe. The diagnosis was that my extremely mild asthma had kicked in, so I was given my first ever breathing treatment, a prescription, and a rescue inhaler. Prior to that visit, I had not used an inhaler in at least 15 years, and my asthma had never been bad enough to be dangerous at any point before that. I have not had another episode since. Please stop trying to enroll me in your asthma care program, via huge, wasteful, information packets and phone calls from your nurses. Sincerely, Risha. ---
**Author:** ![Catamount](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/catamount/32/2840_2.png) [@Catamount](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Catamount)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2008, 1:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nannygrams-from-my-health-insurance-company/457360/6 "2008-07-22T13:57:21Z")
Sir, I bow before you. A masterful piece of work. _genuflect_ ---
**Author:** ![Projammer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/projammer/32/559_2.png) [@Projammer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Projammer)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2008, 2:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nannygrams-from-my-health-insurance-company/457360/7 "2008-07-22T14:08:04Z")
That sir, was a work of art. If I ever need a rant letter written I am so getting you to ghost write it for me. Do you have a rate schedule? ---
**Author:** ![Eva\_Luna](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e495f1/32.png) [@Eva\_Luna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eva_Luna)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2008, 2:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nannygrams-from-my-health-insurance-company/457360/8 "2008-07-22T14:18:30Z")
Mind if I plagiarize a bit? I keep getting letters from my insurance company and pharmacy letting me know vital new information, such as the fact that treating my allergies can prevent asthma attacks. And offering me access to inhaled steroids, which I don’t need 98% of the time. (I can go months on end without needing to use my rescue inhaler, or indeed any asthma medication.) ---
**Author:** ![VunderBob](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/839c29/32.png) [@VunderBob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VunderBob)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2008, 2:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nannygrams-from-my-health-insurance-company/457360/9 "2008-07-22T14:23:45Z")
[QUOTE=Eva Luna] Mind if I plagiarize a bit? I keep getting letters from my insurance company and pharmacy letting me know vital new information, such as the fact that treating my allergies can prevent asthma attacks. And offering me access to inhaled steroids, which I don’t need 98% of the time. (I can go months on end without needing to use my rescue inhaler, or indeed any asthma medication.) [/QUOTE] What’s the line(s) from _Alice’s Restaraunt_ that starts, “If one of us does it…”? If four of us do it, they’ll think it’s a movement. ---
**Author:** ![Mama\_Zappa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/71e660/32.png) [@Mama\_Zappa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mama_Zappa)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2008, 2:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nannygrams-from-my-health-insurance-company/457360/10 "2008-07-22T14:26:20Z")
Beautiful, simply beautiful! 10-ish years back, I was started on a prescription for Synthroid. I got it filled, but didn’t start taking it immediately. Yeah, I know, foolish, but I was being weird. I got a phone call from the Synthroid company reminding me to take it. Yes - Rite Aid was reporting to the company on prescriptions filled, which weren’t refilled as promptly as they thought. So the Synthroid company FUCKING REMINDED ME TO TAKE THEIR MEDICATION. Now, let’s set aside the whole PATIENT PRIVACY thing (I think this was before HIPAA privacy laws)… it was, frankly, NONE OF THEIR DAMN BUSINESS! I quit filling prescriptions at Rite Aid. Oh, and \*\*Risha’\*\*s mention of asthma: I get that sort of call too. EVERY YEAR! Now, I’ve had asthma most of my adult life - 20+ years. Any cursory review of my prescription history will document that. But when my company was sold to another company, this “patient information service” was part of the nifty new prescription management package. Ooooookay. Yanno, for someone newly diagnosed, this sort of service _could_ probably be useful; I’ve found that a lot of docs don’t take the time to educate the patients, and better patient education leads to massively better control and fewer emergencies. I remember the day I first stumbled across a book on asthma - back in 1991 - it was quite literally life-changing to find all this information, RIGHT AT MY FINGERTIPS. But, well… the service does NOT have any information I haven’t already found out - and HOW IN HELL do they manage to _always_ call when I’m in the middle of three other tasks and CANNOT spare the time, to answer invasive questions that appear to be targeted at simpletons and/or designed purely to annoy me. And I mean _always_ - they have quite literally _never_ called me at a time when it was even remotely convenient. Well, they do this to me once a year. And now, that both of my kids have had asthma-related scrips filled, they pester me at least once a year, PER KID. ARRRRGGHHHHHHHHHHH! I guess my ire is misplaced. There are people that do stoopit things out of ignorance. even medical personnel. Hell, I once wound up taking a child to an ER in California because his family doctor told his mother to just quit taking his steroid nebulizer while he went on vacation with us because the mother thought it mighta been a hassle to lug a nebulizer. Riiiight. The DOCTOR told her this, so she did it. 24 hours later the kid was coughing. 24 hours after that he was coughing more. 24 hours after that he was scaring me and we went to the ER. Yep, kid wound up on antibiotics and oral 'roids because of ill-informed medical personnel. Which is all by-the-by, except it illustrates the fact that I know more about asthma management than some professionals, and maybe those annual intrusive phone calls are just possibly NOT NEEDED in my case. (oh, and we’d have gladly lugged the nebulizer, but there was an inhaler version of the steroid that neither the pediatrician, nor the ER doc in California, knew about but I was familiar with so it was _triply_ pointless). ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2008, 2:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nannygrams-from-my-health-insurance-company/457360/11 "2008-07-22T14:47:02Z")
Wow. You people are \*really \* whiny. Your health insurer has a stake in your health - it _is_ their business. If you don’t want to read their patient education crap, don’t. You can’t very well expect them to figure out which of their [del]headaches[/del] customers knows their stuff and which ones don’t. They have to deal with the lowest common denominator. ---
**Author:** ![friedo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/8edcca/32.png) [@friedo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/friedo)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2008, 3:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nannygrams-from-my-health-insurance-company/457360/12 "2008-07-22T15:07:06Z")
[QUOTE=Really Not All That Bright] Wow. You people are \*really \* whiny. Your health insurer has a stake in your health - it _is_ their business. [/QUOTE] Yeah. These are the people who are paying for your drugs. They also have an entire office floor full of gigantic dweebs who are even nerdier than accountants, and these guys have calculated how much _more_ they will probably have to spend on fixing you if you _don’t_ take the drugs that they’re already paying for. So take your medicine like a big boy, and if you don’t want the insurance company in your face, pay for it yourself. ---
**Author:** ![Cheesesteak](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cheesesteak/32/3694_2.png) [@Cheesesteak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cheesesteak)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2008, 3:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nannygrams-from-my-health-insurance-company/457360/13 "2008-07-22T15:12:58Z")
The OP is right, it’s very inappropriate for a health insurance company to send a customer information about diseases they have, and suggest that people actually take medicine in the amount prescribed by their doctor. ---
**Author:** ![Wile\_E](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c37758/32.png) [@Wile\_E](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wile_E)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2008, 3:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nannygrams-from-my-health-insurance-company/457360/14 "2008-07-22T15:43:44Z")
You people are lucky. My insurance company doesn’t give a damn about me, except to make sure my premiums get paid so they can raise their rates and increase my deductible every damn year so that even though I have health insurance I still can’t afford to use it because of the huge deductible and the only other option is a huger premium. My asthma doc admitted to me that in his down time he calculates how much of the medicine his patients are taking by checking how often they request refills from their pharmacies. I saw this as actual concern because he wants people to get better and he must subscribe to the House Theory that patients lie. So maybe he will scold his patients if they aren’t taking their meds but they are supposed to be coming to him for help and he can’t do his job right if they don’t do their part. He did not need to scold me since at most I might miss a couple days a month. If I miss taking my meds I end up regretting it the next day and I enjoy not snezing all day long or having allergy attacks so I remember to take my meds most of the time. His office also called me when I got a refill on my rescue inhaler, they wanted to be sure my asthma wasn’t getting worse which might mean I could need different meds. I see this as actual concern from my doctor and I don’t mind this. If I got something like this from my insurance company I’d probably just shrug it off, they want you to be healthy so they don’t have to pay out as much. I highly doubt they are sending out this information because they think people are idiots, they are just trying to cover their butts. At the most the nanny thing is a minor annoyance. I’m sorry I really can’t get behind an rant about health insurance companies that isn’t about the rates or their unwillingness to pay out. ---
**Author:** ![Harmonious\_Discord](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/74df32/32.png) [@Harmonious\_Discord](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Harmonious_Discord)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2008, 4:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nannygrams-from-my-health-insurance-company/457360/15 "2008-07-22T16:26:16Z")
Sorry my co-pay is 20% Note I use it 80% of the time saving my 20% of the total cost by not using it. Please be sure to pay 100% for the prescriptions, because they already reflect my 20% contribution by not using it. Your 80% is what I have been taking all along. ---
**Author:** ![friedo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/8edcca/32.png) [@friedo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/friedo)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2008, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nannygrams-from-my-health-insurance-company/457360/16 "2008-07-22T16:30:16Z")
[QUOTE=Harmonious Discord] Sorry my co-pay is 20% Note I use it 80% of the time saving my 20% of the total cost by not using it. Please be sure to pay 100% for the prescriptions, because they already reflect my 20% contribution by not using it. Your 80% is what I have been taking all along. [/QUOTE] What? ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2008, 4:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nannygrams-from-my-health-insurance-company/457360/17 "2008-07-22T16:37:31Z")
[QUOTE=friedo] What? [/QUOTE] Joking suggestion for the OP, ie. “if I’m only using 80% of my meds then I shouldn’t be paying for the extra 20% that my copay would cover, right?”] I had to read it about fifty times before I even figured out what language it was, though… ---
**Author:** ![Risha](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/5fc32e/32.png) [@Risha](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Risha)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2008, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nannygrams-from-my-health-insurance-company/457360/18 "2008-07-22T16:41:53Z")
My (minor) annoyance has nothing to do with them attempting to be helpful and/or cut costs related to not managing a disease. I approve of both, actually. It’s their complete lack of appropriate thought about it, and that it results in harassing behavior. If I had one asthma attack treated during a severe but short chest-related illness during the 8+ years I’ve been their customer, and have had nothing else within the subsequent two years, why am I still getting near-monthly calls about it? They need to improve their selection criteria, if nothing else. ---
**Author:** ![maladroit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f475e1/32.png) [@maladroit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/maladroit)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2008, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nannygrams-from-my-health-insurance-company/457360/19 "2008-07-22T18:16:37Z")
[QUOTE=Risha] Bizarrely enough, just this morning I was reading [an article](http://junkfoodscience.blogspot.com/2008/07/will-they-be-told-truth.html) that is directly related. [/QUOTE] wow risha, thanks for that link. The state of the business of health care and the direction it’s taking is chilling. ---
**Author:** ![spinky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/59ef9b/32.png) [@spinky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/spinky)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2008, 7:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nannygrams-from-my-health-insurance-company/457360/20 "2008-07-22T19:58:20Z")
[QUOTE=VunderBob] What’s the line(s) from _Alice’s Restaraunt_ that starts, “If one of us does it…”? If four of us do it, they’ll think it’s a movement. [/QUOTE] And if two people do it, they’ll start receiving pamphlets about domestic partner benefits in the mail. 😉 [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nannygrams-from-my-health-insurance-company/457360.md?page=2)