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I hate insurance companies. I sooooooo hate insurance companies. I have friends in the insurance industry, and I certainly wouldn't want them to be out of jobs, but I really just want to see the entire industry flattened and replaced with a [working] system of non-profit, hassle-free medical coverage. I know that's unlikely to happen, and would also have far-reaching ramifications (especially in the legal industry, and likely my bread and butter), but I have this happy mental picture in my mind of the Evil Insurance Empire being completely flattened. With the use of light sabers. (Yes, I just revealed my inner geek.) I am so tired of dealing with these people, going back and forth between the Evil Insurance Empire and Greedy Medical Billing Empire, and being screwed on both sides. Oh, and throw in Extremely Greedy Pharmaceutical Empire, and you have the perfect storm of suckdom. Sigh.

One of the reasons I went into law is that having legal experience is invaluable in daily life, even outside the scope of a career. My experience in law has saved me many times from being completely screwed by The Man. Now sometimes, regardless of how much legal knowledge you have, The Man still gets you. But I've found as useful as my legal knowledge has been in fighting The Man, it really just seriously raises my blood pressure. It makes me ANGRY to deal with this stuff. Every time I got a messed up bill, or a stupid landlord had tried screwing me over, or some other dispute, it just made me more angry. The older I get, the more it makes me angry. I think because I value my time more these days, and having to spend literally hours on the phone taking care of stupid shit makes me livid. I used to hate those people who were always, "Oh, my time is so important, time is money, blah blah blah, I'm so full of myself." Now I'm afraid I'm becoming one of them. It'll probably get worse when I actually become an attorney and I can say that my time is worth X amount of dollars, literally! And that hour I spent on the phone dealing with stupid shit, could have been spent doing legal work for a client, and not myself. Getting paid! I can't pay myself!

Anyway, I will win my current fight with Stupid University HMO, it's just going to be a huge pain. Cora is on husband's insurance, and they had pre-approved her to receive vaccines to protect against RSV. (they denied the first request, then approved the second request after she had a lobe of her lung removed.) Now they're denying the claim. These shots cost $1500 each. That's right. Fifteen hundred dollars. Each. She needed one each month during the RSV season. They're denying the claim because they say they only agreed to pay the doctor's office for the price of the shots, not the pharmaceutical company. Ohmygod. Now I have to go through the appeals process and hope they are actually reasonable. Hahahaha, I know, that's funny, right? Oh well, I guess I should be grateful for the extra legal experience. But I'm gearing up to write the nice long appeal letter, being sure to use fun words like "reliance" and "bad faith" and "big fat lawsuit."

But seriously, these are the kind of things I love (well, except I would love to do it for other people and actually get paid). I'm glad to not be doing insurance defense anymore. I'm not sure I can do it ever again. I didn't feel bad doing it before because most of the cases were stupid people looking for a quick buck who weren't actually hurt, and the ones that were actually hurt deserved a fair settlement and that's what we were (hopefully) working for. But when there's a way to deny liability, that's the goal. I don't like that. Just like here, they're trying to work in a loophole to avoid paying my claim. They had to know the doctor's office wouldn't just stock this vaccine and instead they would have to pay the pharmaceutical company. Their consent to obtain the vaccine from an outside pharmacy was implicit in the authorization they issued. They just suck.

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