Deja Vu, All Over Again

This past Melanoma Awareness Month just wouldn’t have been complete for me without experiencing the unique joy of responding to a semi-literate and incomprehensible letter from my health insurance company about some pending claims. I know I’m fortunate to have any coverage, and I’m thankful I still have the mental capacity to navigate automated phone systems and (usually) respond correctly to the computer-generated voice’s questions. But I just don’t get what additional information the insuror’s claims department could possibly now need about the medical necessity for a MRI scan that the insuror acknowledges it had preauthorized. Am I to believe they preauthorize an expensive scan without first determining that it is medically necessary? Only Medicare would do something like that. But my insuror and I still go through some variation of this drill nearly every time I’m scanned or examined. Since we have all been here before I can’t think of a more appropriate song to borrow today than Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young’s “Déjà vu”…



If I had never been here before I would probably know not what to do
You too?
If I had never been here before on another time around the wheel
I would probably know not how to deal
With all of you.
And I feel
Like I've been here before
Feel
Like I've been here before
And you know
It makes me wonder
What's going on paying my claim

Do you know?
Don't you wonder?
What's going on with insurance.

We have all been here before
We have all been here before
We have all been here before
We have all been here before