Backdoor Billed Yet Again: Are Any Sales Final Anymore?

You know… I think I have enough financial problems.  I have a mortgage that breaks me.  I have student loans that make me regret ever being a student.  I can barely afford the cable/phone/internet I have.

My one vice?  Netflix.  My idea of a night out?  A night in.

I barely get by at all.  In fact, if I have any money left at the end of the month, it’s probably because I forgot to pay something.  So when I got a bill for a blood test I took a month ago, that I was told would already be paid by my health insurance company, I nearly pulled out my own eyeballs.

As you can see, I’ve been billed an additional $12 by LabCorp for a blood test I took in November.   I can’t tell you how frustrating this is.   Let’s start at the beginning.

I get a prescription for a blood test.  On my list of “participating providers” of laboratory-related services is LabCorp.  In fact, they are the only “provider” on my list.  The great thing about having a “provider” is that my health insurance company has a deal with them.  Much like a doctor visit, I am instructed to remit a co-payment on the LabCorp premises ($20), and then my health insurance company will cover the rest. 

You see, that’s the last I am supposed to see of it.  I don’t even get the actual results of the test – my doctor does.  I shouldn’t see anything else besides some sort of receipt I get every time my health insurance company pays for something. 

I’m no fool, though.  I know that sometimes the tests cost more than the insurance company is willing to pay.  That’s why whenever I go for any kind of lab test, whether it be an MRI or a little blood test like this one, I always ask up front, “This is my health insurance company.  Aside from my co-pay, is this test covered completely under my insurance plan?”  Invariably, I get a yes answer.

“Oh, don’t worry about it.  It’s covered.  This is just a blood test,” said the nice phlebotomist/cashier lady as she entered all of my medical and personal information into her computer.  “We do this all the time and there is never any extra payment.  May I have your credit card, please?”

Out comes the credit card, in goes the needle.  Lickety-split, and I forget all about it.  I don’t even ask for a lollipop. 

So a few weeks later, I get this bill.  Twelve dollars.  Why?  Why am I billed yet again?  I pay for health insurance.  I contribute a co-payment.   If there is any extra money left over, it should be dealt with by my health insurance company, much like an auto insurance company would deal with it, and not by me.  I’m not the one negotiating the terms of the exclusive deal they have. 

If LabCorp is the only “provider” for my health insurance company, and I pay for my health insurance and agree to the terms associated with my health insurance (e.g., making a co-payment) then haven’t I done my part in this transaction?  Isn’t it my health insurance company who has failed to pay the bill?

Anyway, that may very well now be a lost cause, but I do always ask providers ahead of time, “Will this cost me any more money than I’m dishing out right now?” 

Well, you know what LabCorp?  Much like any other company, Ill Will and Everything Else Inc. has a strict policy that dictates all negotiations in its business dealings must be dealt with before the actual transaction takes place. 

I know it’s a revolutionary business idea, and it may be a little hard to grasp, but let me take you through a hypothetical scenario:

You’re in my supermarket.  You pick up a pint of Ciao Bella Mango Sorbet.  You take it up to my counter.  You pay me for it.  You take it home and eat it. 

See?  It’s simple.  You pay me for it, then you eat it!  Now, let’s throw a little wrinkle into the scenario:

You’ve eaten your Ciao Bella Mango Sorbet.  Weeks later, I show up at your door.  I say, “Listen to me, you sorbet-chewing, liberal elitist.  You owe me another eleven dollars.  Now give it here or I’ll put it down as a delinquency on your credit report and it will follow you around for the rest of your life.”

What do you do?  Well, under the Ill Will and Everything Else Inc. Business Policy, you will always know what to do.   

You must kick me in the shins and tell me to leave.  If I don’t stop bothering you about the eleven dollars, then you must call the police and press charges against me for harassment. 

I think you’ll agree that this is a sound -- and fair --  business model.  In the spirit of “Best Practices,” please feel free to use it without fear of copyright infringement.

So what is this all about?  It’s about fairness.  LabCorp, you’re not being fair.  If you charged me the correct amount of money before the transaction was made, then I would have paid it.  You didn’t, so you can suck your twelve dollars out of my circumcised phallus… along with my best wishes for the New Year.

Great… I guess now I’ll have to take off my pants, too.

Look, as an American, and a New York City resident from 1997 – 2002, I understand the effects of terrorism. We are all wary now. We are more careful. When there is a stray tote bag on the street or in the hallway of a large building, we call the police. We are not terrorism virgins. We understand when “this is not a test of the Emergency Broadcast System.”

“Shit just got real,” as Martin Lawrence said so eloquently in Bad Boys II.

I’ve hated this extra responsibility. In my opinion, if someone is going to kill a whole lot of people in a non-secure area, there is very little anyone can do about it. Sometimes, like at Fort Hood, nothing can even be done in a secure area. So how can I worry? What can I do besides “duck and cover?”

This paranoia is the thing, you see. I get body searched every time I fly. I understand why. I’m a young, single man who flies alone. Terrorist bombers generally fly solo, or at the very least, buy their tickets separately. What I cannot abide, however, is being forced to take off my shoes at security.

I am loathe to admit that I am just as angry at Richard Reid, the “Shoe Bomber,” as I am at any of the 9/11 terrorists. This is a guy who smuggled an explosive device in his shoes and tried to detonate it on a transatlantic flight. He couldn’t. He was faulty. The device was faulty. The plan was faulty.

Since December 2001, extra security has not been enough anymore. Now I have to untie my shoes, take them off, send them through a metal detector, walk barefoot through a magnetometer, put my shoes back on, and tie them in the space of a minute. Invariably, I hold up the line because I’m not a quick shoelace tier. It’s embarrassing and aggravating, and it’s all Richard Reid’s fault. I can’t help it. I hate him.

Now, we have a bigger problem. Today, a Nigerian national by the name of Abdul Farouk Abdulmutallab smuggled chemicals in his pants and set his legs on fire while his transatlantic flight landed at Detroit-Metro. Besides being the single-most interesting event to occur in Detroit since the Tigers made the World Series in 2006, this is the single-worst terrorist attack in the United States since Richard Reid. Why? I’ll tell you why.

Now, I’m going to have to take off my fucking pants. It’s bad enough with the shoes. Now the pants? My lord. I have to fly in April. I’ve been dreading it anyway, and now I’ll have to take off my pants and show the other passengers my Old Navy patterned boxer shorts.

Look, this isn’t a blog entry as much as it is a plea to Congressman Peter King of Long Island, the ranking Republican on the House Homeland Security Sub-Committee.

Mr. King, please… please… PLEASE… don’t make me take off my pants at the airport. I can’t bear it. Look, the guy didn’t even pull it off. He failed. He has burns on his legs. Put him in a hole and forget all about him. I will personally staff the prison at Guantanamo Bay to keep him there. I’ll find a way. Just, please don’t overreact.

If there is one thing that is certain, it’s this: changing the way we travel has been very humiliating.

Remember Mr. King, there are many ways to keep us safe. New advances in technology are popping up all the time. I am just as wary of terrorism as anyone and I can appreciate the need for safety… but if I have to take off my pants at the airport, then the terrorists have truly won.

If not for my sake, please do it for the other passengers. Some of my boxers have holes in them.

My Favorite Martian! (or Why I Love Sarah Palin)

Why is it that people relate to Sarah Palin? Well why do you think, you smug bastard?

Wow, you’re irritating! Is there nothing you can say that doesn’t have attitude? Can you issue a single declarative sentence without asking a silly, rhetorical question? (Uh, ok. Guilty.)

There is nothing more aggravating than a person saying something you don’t agree with and also being smug about it. I didn’t like Donald Rumsfeld because he believed that we couldn’t be safe without invading Iraq. I hated him because he treated those who questioned him as though their dogs took a series of big, steaming craps on his front porch… and then he would wink at the people who asked him the softball questions.

Ha, look at this guy! What a ‘tard! How did he even get in here?

I see the same thing in Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, although frankly, they’re more racist and insane than smug. I also see the smugness in the MSNBC TV hosts, especially Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow and that weird freakshow, Ed Schultz. (Where did he come from exactly?) I mean, I enjoy their shows because I agree with them, but they sure don’t make it easy sometimes.

Special note to Olbermann: You need to laugh at the answers your guests give you, Keith, not your own questions.

This kind of smugness on the liberal end has leaked into the actual political arena. Last week, I saw Florida Congressman Alan Grayson on Hardball with Chris Mathews. When Chris Mathews asked him what he thought of Dick Cheney (also guilty) badmouthing the president, Congressman Grayson said that Cheney should “stfu.” Mathews didn’t get the reference and asked him what it meant. Grayson smirked and hinted at it by saying the first letter stood for “shut.”

Honestly, it’s no wonder conservative folks hate us. We’re unbearable. And that’s the thing. We need to be bearable. Being bearable is the only way you can win elections.

If there is one thing Sarah Palin has over us liberals, it’s that she isn’t smug. Sure, she may not have the capacity. She’s not very smart. Most dumb people aren’t smug. Most.

When Bush was first elected in 2000, many people said that Bush was “the candidate you’d most want to have a beer with.” The fact that Bush was an alcoholic and he didn’t drink anymore obviously didn’t enter into it. But Dubya never made you feel stupid in a conversation. Dubya never made fun of you. Why? Dubya had really low standards. He put his dad’s friend on the VP ticket and tried to nominate his own lawyer for the Supreme Court. If you were around, you could win a prize. It reminded me of those stories about Elvis ripping his own jewelry off and giving it to his fans for no other reason than because they were there. What a guy.

Palin is much less charming, and undeniably crazier. It’s one thing to deny climate change and try to cover it up. It’s a whole lot different when you acknowledge climate change and don’t care why it’s actually happening because the rapture is coming…

She might be judgmental, but that’s only because she’s mental. Everybody knows she’s mental, so nobody takes it seriously.

Nobody wants to have a beer with this woman either. Nobody. Take one look at her and you can tell that after one beer she’ll start hollering uncontrollably until she does a body shot out of another girl’s navel and throws up all over the bar. That girl is off the hook.

But she’s not going to call you stupid.

And she smiles. It may be a smile with the craziest eyes this side of Anne Ramsey (see below), but it’s a smile. She’s not smarter than you. She doesn’t challenge you. Her standards are reallllllyyyy lowwww.

So that’s why I like her. Of course, I’m smart enough not to vote for her. Keep that in mind, too.

So when your friends, who perhaps aren’t as swift as you, tell you how much they love that "Sarah spirit," tell them you understand but that Sarah has rabies and a tattoo on her back that says, “I (heart) Satan.” Tell them that God came to you in a dream and told you, through the Archangel Metatron, that Sarah Palin is the anti-Christ and breathes pure hellfire. Tell them that Sarah's urine turns roses into weeds and her kisses give babies skin cancer. That might be the only way those idiot friends of yours will listen to you...

Sorry. I couldn’t help myself. It's harder than it looks. Somebody better call the smug police.

Richard Was Drinking Again: A Book Review

Richard Burton: Prince of Players is an interesting read if you like drinking games, which means I really enjoyed it. You can enjoy it, too.

The trick is, every time the author, Michael Munn, issues the line, “Richard was drinking again,” take a sip of beer. If your tolerance is as high as Mr. Burton’s was, then whenever the author describes Elizabeth Taylor as furious, you should down a shot of whiskey. Needless to say, it took me a while to finish reading this book.

Look, we all know that Richard Burton drank… a lot. We all know that drinking consumed his life, finally culminating in his death from a cerebral hemorrhage in 1984. The book, however, didn’t need to be so consumed with it. The man drank. I get it. We all knew that. You can’t blame every poorly conceived decision the man made on alcohol. Surely, there were other factors involved. Richard Burton admitted having one homosexual experience in his life. The author devotes an entire chapter to bolster this one non-story. I get it. The man wasn't gay. We all knew that as well.

This book suffers somewhat from a lack of insight into Burton's character. Either that or one of the finest actors of the latter half of the twentieth century was fooling everyone into believing that he was deep. The author considers himself a friend of the late Mr. Burton – not a close friend, but a friend. Mr. Munn spent a few days with Mr. Burton over the course of several years. He conducted a formal interview with Mr. Burton only once and over thirty years ago. He uses their limited conversations as the basis for his biography. That would be fine if they spent more time together, but they didn’t.

The author could have taken the standard biographer’s approach by interviewing those closest to Mr. Burton, using the common threads of those stories to give a three-dimensional portrayal. He didn’t. Maybe it wasn’t the author’s fault. After all, the subject died at least 24 years before publication. The closest interview the author got was Claire Bloom, the long-suffering other woman during Mr. Burton’s first marriage. She would have been a great source, had she perhaps been interviewed sometime after his death, and not years before when Mr. Burton was alive and married. She was naturally respectful and tight-lipped. Rod Steiger gave more insight into Burton and Bloom’s relationship than either of them did, and he was barely present for any of it. Ms. Bloom published her tell-all autobiography in 1995. Wouldn’t it have been something if the author interviewed her during the 10+ year gap between Burton’s death and her book?

Therein lies the rub. Most of the author’s substantive interviews with anyone associated with Mr. Burton were before he died. He’s done almost no real research since that period. It’s understandable that the author may not have been able to secure interviews with those who were very close to Burton while he was alive. After all, that would mean compromising their relationships with him. Why not after he died?

Where is the interview with his daughter Kate? What about the often drunk, pill-addicted Taylor? What about the interview with wives Sally, Susan and Sybil? How about Richard Harris or Peter O’Toole? Even if some of these people are not with us anymore, either by death or invalidity, they were for several years after Burton’s demise. What was the author doing with his material for all of these years? Why hasn’t he supplemented this material with developments that may have arisen since then?

It's infuriating that this book was published so long after Mr. Burton’s death and yet has not been updated with new interviews. It’s especially infuriating since the author’s literary gifts are so evident, and his perspective as a fellow actor and sometime friend are so valuable. Say what you want about this book, Mr. Munn can write. The book is worth reading, if only for that. And it makes for an excellent drinking game.

OFFICIAL TRANSCRIPT: Michael Vick Speaks to Children in Virginia

I took a page out of my cousin’s book for this one. I hope he doesn’t mind.



On November 30th, disgraced football player MICHAEL VICK made a surprise visit to his alma mater, Huntington Middle School, to speak about his troubles and motivate children as part of his conditional release from prison. Hundreds of Newport News-area seventh- and eighth-graders gathered in their auditorium to listen to what MR. VICK had to say about dog-fighting, football and peer pressure. Here is the transcript of their interaction:

MR. VICK: Hello children, I’m Michael Vick. Some of you may know me from being a football player. I played for this school, I went off to Virginia Tech and played there and then I was drafted by the Atlanta Falcons. From the time I was your age, I’ve spent my life achieving against all odds. Whether it was in football or in the classroom, which is just as important, it is always important to do your best, to give your best effort.

Now, you won’t always succeed. I’ve succeeded because I have incredible physical talent, but I’ve also failed. You will also fail some of the time, but if you always give your best effort, you will have nothing to be ashamed of. So the moral of the story is, always give your best effort. Thank you.

THE CHILDREN begin to applaud. MR. VICK’S LAWYER approaches him, whispers in his ear, and retreats.

MR. VICK: Right, right. Well, kids, I also want to talk to you about peer pressure. See, at one point I had everything going for me, but I fell in with the wrong people and I ended up paying for it by going to prison for almost two years. Don’t ever, EVER, do something just because your friends told you to. Make your own judgments and be your own man. Thank you.

THE CHILDREN applaud again. MR. VICK’S LAWYER turns and looks to the FEDERAL PROBATION OFFICER. The FEDERAL PROBATION OFFICER shakes his head. MR. VICK’S LAWYER shakes his head at MR. VICK.

MR. VICK: Peer pressure can ruin your life. I thought I could trust my friends when they said I could make millions of dollars raising pit bulls to fight for sport. They told me how simple it could be to buy a large piece of property, build a warehouse to keep and fight the dogs, hire dog-breeding experts and dog-fighting trainers.

Then my friends told me that all I had to do was spread the word that I had a bit pull ranch and dog fighting arena, and to invite them to fight their own dogs with mine and bet money on them like it was a boxing match in Las Vegas. My friends said it would be easy money for me and that I should do it.

Well, needless to say, my friends were wrong. They were so wrong, and I was wrong to listen to them. They told me to come to the ranch and watch as amateur veterinarians drugged pit bull bitches in order to extract all of their teeth so they would be helpless when they attempted to breed them with other vicious pit bulls… and I did. I went and I watched… because I trusted my friends.

My friends also said, “Hey Michael, why don’t you come watch the fights and bet on your dogs? It will be fun!” So I did. I watched. I bet on them. My friends told me it was OK and I listened to them. After the matches we would kill the dogs that failed by shooting them in their little dog heads. I watched because my friends told me I should.

My friends said that this wasn’t wrong so I believed them even though there was this little voice in my head that said, “No, no. Don’t do it. Don’t invest hundreds of thousands of dollars to create a factory of brutality, cruelty, death, and ILLEGAL GAMBLING! I forgot illegal gambling! I knew it wasn’t right in my heart but I did it anyway because my friends told me it was ok.

So learn from my mistakes, kids. Don’t let your friends lead you down the wrong path, or you will end up just like me!

Now, I would like to answer your questions, so speak up one at a time and speak loud so everyone can hear you.

CHILD #1: Why did you do it, Michael?

MR. VICK: Like I said, I fell in with the wrong crowd. I should have never listened to my friends. OK, next question, please.

CHILD #2: Yeah, uh, what are we supposed to do if our friends tell us to build a giant dog-fighting arena? I mean, it’s tough to tell your friends you don’t think it’s cool.

MR. VICK: I’ll tell you what you should do. Do exactly what I didn’t – say “no.” Say “it’s wrong and I won’t do it!” Do that, and you won’t end up in federal prison like I did.

CHILD #3: Yeah, now that I know that I’m not supposed to build a giant dog-murdering farm, what’s a smarter way to spend my time?

MR. VICK: Good question! What can you do that is smarter than building an Aushwitz for man’s best friend?

If I had it do all over again, I’d probably just stick my dick in a microwave oven. It’s just as self-destructive but it costs less and it’s slightly more challenging. The only thing you have to worry about is sometimes you can end up in the hospital and even though it’s supposed to be confidential, the story will get out through rumor and you’ll end up being stared at like you're RICHARD GERE.

Anyway, thank you all for coming and not making me feel like a total douche. Now I only have thirty-nine more school appearances to make. Goodbye kids!