Health pursuits

Folks, I have spent nearly eight hours talking with four agents on the phone over the past two days, trying to get healthcare insurance. It’s not enough that health insurance plans are purposefully arcane, byzantine and obscure. No—TransAmerica and eHealth have to use software that apparently dates from the last century. So there were system crashes, agent lockouts and phone failures.

(Full disclosure, I once interviewed for a product management position with the latter. It was not a felicitous experience, though I don’t hold that against the agents on the phone. I do find it interesting that each time there was a crash or lockout I asked whether the system was homegrown, and each time the answer was no—either TransAmerica or some application eHealth had paid a vendor to produce. What, then, do their product managers do?)

Anyway, about 75% of the way through yesterday’s call, I got some iced tea, because by then I’d already been on the phone for nearly three hours. Faith, the agent, heard the ice tinkling in the glass (which always reminds me of the opening of Vince Bugliosi’s Helter Skelter, describing the summer night in the Hollywood Hills when Sharon Tate and four others were murdered; gosh—50 years ago next month!). She asked, “Are you getting a drink?”

“Iced tea! It’s iced tea! I don’t apply for insurance under the influence!”

Well, when it was finally over, Faith and I agreed that we both might well have a little slurp in the evening, because we’d by-God earned it.

I don’t know about her, but I certainly did.

However, I’m now covered by health insurance. I hope TransAmerica is easier to deal with than their application.