New Page 1

IF THIS IS PROGRESS,
WHY DO I FEEL SO BACKWARD?
Journal of Healing – Jan. 11, 2006

By Mary Koch

It is time to announce the winners in our first annual survey of Dubious Advances in Health Care. Without further ado they are:

TELEMARKETING DIVISION: I’m on hold, waiting to make an appointment for my husband at the clinic. I don’t mind hold. I prefer it to telephone roulette: “Listen to the following menu and press . . . “

The clinic’s initial message is a little off-putting. The recorded voice gives the obligatory assurance that my call is important, and operators are busy assisting other “customers.” Customers?! We used to be patients. Now I guess we’re just another sales slip in the cash register.

Sometimes you get to listen to music while on hold, but not so much lately. Many businesses have figured out people desperate enough to wait on the phone are a captive audience. So we get a “pitch.” Clinics are no different.

I sit, dumfounded, listening to a spiel about the latest specialist who’s been added to the stable: His areas of expertise, his education, biography and even family connections. No mention of his bedside manner, but after he’s been practicing a while, we’ll probably get a tag line saying, “Nine out of 10 patients strongly recommend Dr X . . . “

The pitch is interrupted by a young man eager to take my order, er, make my appointment. When we agree on a date and time, he hangs up with a cheerful, “Gotcha! It’s a done deal.” And that’s a direct quote.

OPPORTUNISM DIVISION: When computer software engineer Dan Robinson’s infant son suffered a rare genetic disorder requiring expensive medical treatment, he did what any distraught parent would do.

As reported by the New York Times, Robinson went to his boss with a business proposition. Robinson was swamped with medical bills -- $1.2 million in the first year. He would set up spreadsheets and still couldn’t figure out why bills didn’t match the “E.O.B.’s” (explanations of benefit) from insurance companies.

Welcome to health care financing. Medical bills are from Venus and E.O.B.’s are from Mars. Robinson happened to work for Intuit, maker of personal finance software Quicken and TurboTax. Intuit recognizes complexity as opportunity, and the company liked the numbers. Millions of us are sorting through irreconcilable medical statements every year.

The new software, “Medical Expense Manager,” was released last June at 50 bucks a pop. Now, even though high medical bills are the No. 1 cause of personal bankruptcy in this country, folks can rest easy. Let your computer do the worrying.

Mr. Robinson, I’m happy to report, did not go bankrupt. He went to law school.

UNDOING NATURE DIVISION: Discerning readers may wish to stop right here. On the other hand, if you were discerning, you would have turned the page long before this. So, with some trepidation, let us forge onward.

The latest rage in plastic surgery procedures is, ta-dah, hymen reattachments. This adds a new wrinkle to a centuries-old theological argument: when is a virgin not a virgin, or vice versa?

If you think I’ve been spending too much time perusing the tabloids while waiting in the grocery store check-out line, let me assure you that I read this item also in the New York Times – generally regarded as our nation’s “newspaper of record.”

And there’s more. For those women who have done all possible face lifting, boob reshaping, and buttocks tucking, there’s yet another area to redefine. The discerning gal can have a vaginal reconstruction.

Now is a good time to turn the page. And if your head is shaking, I suspect there’s a cure for that.

Return to Home Page