Just Kristin

Not more than a few days after I filled­out [this HNet site com­ment form] regard­ing two erro­neously “con­tested” charges in my claims his­tory I have rec’d yet another request to fill out a pre­vi­ous cov­er­age ques­tion­naire! I com­pleted one for the first two doc­tors I saw with my new HNet cov­er­age (the answers were the same for both), and the answers will be the same if I fill it out again! I feel ignored and abused. No one I have spo­ken to will tell me why I seem to be required to fill out one of these forms for each and every doc­tor visit I make. I was told by a HNet rep, via Twit­ter, that I would be con­tacted if I gave con­tact info in a pri­vate mes­sage — which I DID — only to hear noth­ing. I am per­sona non grata with my Psy­chi­a­trists’ billing office due to HNet’s glacial slow­ness. Lastly, I have rec’d no reply at all to the first instance of this form I filled out less than a week ago. To be hon­est, I have very lit­tle hope of this being read at this point. From now on, I will go thru my employer’s HR rep­re­sen­ta­tives to get the ser­vice I pay HNet to give me (a sad thing), I will change insur­ances as soon as open enroll­ment comes around again, and I will do my best to dis­suade as many peo­ple as I can from choos­ing HNet, as the grief is not worth what lit­tle ben­e­fit there is to be had. I am quite sure that there are kind and saintly reps at HNet — I have even spo­ken to a few — but the cor­po­rate tan­gle of B.S. required to get any­thing done, and the reluc­tance to cover the most basic of drugs and pro­ce­dures must make it hard for them to keep smil­ing. I know it has made it nearly impos­si­ble for me.

Mem­ber Ser­vices Representative -

I apol­o­gize in advance for the tone of this note, but I am at my wit’s end. I only see two doc­tors reg­u­larly, both out of neces­sity. Dr. N was paid by Health­net for one visit with­out any prob­lems or need for my inter­ven­tion. After that, how­ever, things went all pear-shaped. I have had to send a form let­ter — idiocy, really, as it is not at all dif­fi­cult to see between insur­ance com­pa­nies that my con­di­tion is pre-existing, and that I have never been with­out cov­er­age — basi­cally stat­ing those two things. I sent this let­ter, along with sup­port­ing doc­u­men­ta­tion, includ­ing past insur­ance proof and copies of every claim, for each doc­tor with charges being con­tested — Drs. G and N. I sent it reg­is­tered mail, so I do have proof of that pack­age being rec’d by your office. Still how­ever I am hounded by claims that I didn’t sup­ply the form… but oddly enough, both doc­tors now have claims that have been paid! Do I have to fill out one of those @#$%@#$% forms for every claim? If claims for both doc­tors are now being accepted, what am I miss­ing? It is hor­ri­ble that any pay­ments were held based on a form I only needed to sign to begin with, but to have pay­ments, and actions on claims, move so slowly is hor­ri­ble, as it impacts my rela­tion­ship with the doc­tors’ office. I have never had this prob­lem before, have never been asked to jump thru so many hoops in order to get cov­er­age, and I have switched insur­ance com­pa­nies a hand­ful of times. Please find out for me what the remain­ing prob­lem is on the fol­low­ing claims, and what worked for the other claims for the same doc­tor that didn’t work for these:

[snip]

Just for the record, the fact that Health­Net will also not cover my med­ica­tion (Lexapro), which I have been using suc­cess­fully for over 4 years (3+ years before sign­ing up with Health­Net) with­out hav­ing my doc­tor con­test the mat­ter, no doubt because it is not yet generic and might actu­ally cost Health­Net some money, is also dis­gust­ing. It is a good thing that I am dou­ble cov­ered via my husband’s place of employ­ment, or I would be in finan­cial trouble.

Again, I am sorry to the staffer that has to read this, but it is hard hav­ing to fight to get the ben­e­fits for which I am pay­ing. If I had to do as much to be allowed to leave the gro­cery store with the food I’d already paid for, the store would be out of busi­ness in a day.

Dis­grun­tled,
JustKristin

Core human skills from Kot­tke:

A human being should be able to change a dia­per, plan an inva­sion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a build­ing, write a son­net, bal­ance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, com­fort the dying, take orders, give orders, coop­er­ate, act alone, solve equa­tions, ana­lyze a new prob­lem, pitch manure, pro­gram a com­puter, cook a tasty meal, fight effi­ciently, and die gal­lantly. Spe­cial­iza­tion is for insects.

Core human skills from Kot­tke:

A human being should be able to change a dia­per, plan an inva­sion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a build­ing, write a son­net, bal­ance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, com­fort the dying, take orders, give orders, coop­er­ate, act alone, solve equa­tions, ana­lyze a new prob­lem, pitch manure, pro­gram a com­puter, cook a tasty meal, fight effi­ciently, and die gal­lantly. Spe­cial­iza­tion is for insects.

Moon­dusters, all — I recently rec’d an email from the good friend and man­ager of Terry Black with whom I had com­mu­ni­cated when I first decided to offer the song “Moon­dust” to peo­ple.  He wrote to inform me of Mr. Black’s pass­ing, and to let me — and all of you — know that Mr. Black was pleased to know that his song had touched so many.  The let­ter is below.  If any of you can think of a suit­able trib­ute to Mr. Black, please let me know.

Dear Kristin

It is with sad­ness that I must tell you that Terry Black passed away
last week-end qui­etly in his home in BC Canada.
Terry had not been well…he was 62.

I wanted to let you know again that he was thrilled with the inter­est on your blog with his ver­sion of Moondust…it always bright­ened his day when he heard
peo­ples comments.

Terry was a very quiet and kind hearted per­son with a big voice…Success came when he was 15 years old with the song Unless You Care in 1964 as the first artist signed to ABC Dun­hill records…he toured with the Beach Boys and was on Amer­i­can Band­stand and even The Dat­ing Game…for those who remem­ber.
He was asked to play oppo­site Elvis in a film as his lit­tle brother..and was one of the first invited to be a mem­ber of the Mon­kees in the 60’s.
He had many sto­ries that he would only tell if you pried them out of him…very modest.

Thank you again for con­tin­u­ing Terry’s legacy with the Moon­dust page…one of Terry’s finer moments.

All the best

Geoff Gib­bons

2009-07-07 20:41:48 –0700

Orig­i­nally uploaded by justkristin

I can’t tell if I am a sad­der human being because I worry that Pooter and his mom must miss each other, or because the thought of them not miss­ing each other fills me with an empty ache… Either way, the focus now is keep­ing him warm, fed and safe until we can get him to Project Wildlife tomor­row morn­ing. Hang in there, Pooter!

I am feel­ing musi­cally unset­tled this morn­ing. So far, I have gone from Monk to Belle and Sebas­t­ian to Mraz to Dufay, and none of them are help­ing me set­tle. Sug­ges­tions, any­one? Assume I have everything.

A post to a Chaucer list­serv to which I sub­scribe has re-ignited a worry I have about grad school. The doc­toral pub­li­ca­tions that fill the SDSU library stand as a tes­ta­ment to the pro­found depths reached by schol­ars in search of yet un-published, PhD-worthy mate­r­ial. Much as I adore Chaucer, his writ­ings, and medieval his­tory, how­ever, I am not sure that I will be able to find some­thing to hook my grad-student claws into that will both inter­est me and be wor­thy of a degree. Every­thing short of (or per­haps includ­ing) John of Gaunt’s navel lint col­lec­tion and its effect on the pro­logue of the “Summoner’s Tale” has been cov­ered already… But I love it so, and want to swim in it for the rest of my life, so what is a bud­ding medieval­ist to do? At any rate, the schol­arly Pro­fes­sor Brian S. Lee wrote:

I’ve been read­ing AH Japp’s eulo­gis­tic Life and Writ­ings of De Quincey. Learned clas­si­cist as de Quincey was, he was opposed to those in high places who pro­moted Greek to the neglect of Eng­lish lit­er­a­ture, argu­ing that the pref­er­ence for even mediocre Greek writ­ing was due as much to the plea­sure of hav­ing over­come the dif­fi­culty of read­ing it as to any intrin­sic merit it might have.

Then this:  ‘Devoted as he was to Homer, at one place he exclaims:  “Show me a piece of Homer’s hand­i­work that comes within a hun­dred leagues of that divine pro­logue to the Can­ter­bury Tales, or of the Knight’s Tale, or The Man of Law’s Tale, or of the Tale of the Patient Griseldis.” ’

It’s surely unex­pected (at that date at any rate) to find Chaucer ranked so far abover Homer.  And inter­est­ing that he should so des­ig­nate the Clerk’s Tale.  Inter­est­ing too his selec­tion of tales once more pop­u­lar than they are today.  Would it be unchar­i­ta­ble to ask how far into the col­lec­tion he had read, and whether he had read Troilus?

BSL

What do y’all think? If the intrin­sic merit is my joy, is that enough? What if the source of my joy has already been cov­ered in a pre­vi­ous paper? Need I go on a navel-lint hunt? Fur­ther­more, is it indica­tive of any­thing (my love of Chaucer? my over-frequenting of Chaucer’s blog that I first thought the ini­tials at the bot­tom stood for “by seinte loy”?

2009-05-08 21:04:39 –0700

Orig­i­nally uploaded by justkristin

Oh, my col­lec­tion of librar­ian para­pher­na­lia grows and grows, from the Nancy Pearl action fig­ure (with super shush­ing power!) to the ISBN bar­code reader, to the “JustKristin, Librar­ian” name plate… and now, for my birth­day, the two loves of my life have bought me my very own Kik-Step!!! And a sexy, sporty red model, no less! What more could a reference-whore like myself wish for? Well, yes. I know stone lions out­side the front door would be a nice touch, but… :)