For every claim that I receive in the mail, statement of benefits or denial of benefits or bill for premiums from Anthem Blue Cross, I also get a sheet of paper that offers Language Assistance Services. Is this just in case a member of our family, even Sophie, might suddenly gain fluency in a language other than English? The fact that Anthem has the capacity to offer its estimable (questionable) "services" in English, Spanish, Chinese (Traditional), Korean, Vietnamese and Tagalog is secondary to the fact that we have never requested Language Assistance despite more than a decade of "membership" in that estimable health insurance company. If I were a math nerd, I'd figure out what one piece of paper costs and then multiply that cost by the approximate ten thousand sheets of Language Assistance Services paper that I've received over the years and then I would compare it to the ten thousand premium increases I've received "due to the spiraling costs of healthcare" and then I'd see if we're even. I'm not a math nerd, though, but rather a poetry one, so I'll just remark on the beauty of those Chinese (Traditional) symbols that hearken back to my days studying the language in college, the better to understand Li Po and Tu Fu. Then I'll throw it in the recycling bin where eventually it'll join its brethren in some giant dump before being churned out again.
I'm just waiting for the death panels to kick in before I start to bitch about insurance companies.
ReplyDeleteHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
I have to laugh. I just have to. I assist some friends who are on MNCare (Minnesota's insurance for people who don't have insurance available through work or who do have it available through work but cannot afford it). I help them with the paperwork they have to fill out and the gobs of hoops they have to jump through. And bottom-line is that in their case it is a godsend to have this insurance available and it actually is good insurance. But I digress. In every single solitary mailing they get from MNCare, there is a 1/3 sheet of paper with all of the languages they can get evertything translated into. So, the same as you see, but now I realize I need to be grateful that it is 1/3 of the waste that you have to witness :)
ReplyDeleteI woke up the other morning and for some reason, I was speaking Kabyle, fluently. It was so strange, and worse, only Kabyle, not English as well. Pearlsky was talking a Khosian tongue. Figures. So you see, it is not useless what they are doing.
ReplyDeleteSheesh.
Don't get me started!
ReplyDeleteWouldn't it be nice if they included a translation of insurance-speak?
ReplyDeleteEfficiency is not the insurance industry's strong suit. Clearly.
ReplyDeleteI also really like that the first question--in written English--is "Can you read this letter?" If you DID happen to be illiterate, you would not be getting their kind services written over an entire page.
ReplyDeleteThe language in which we can all speak to insurance companies has not yet been born. They live in hope, but meanwhile you pay for the paper.
ReplyDeleteWe get dozens of those every month. Dozens. Sometimes there are three or four claims in one envelope - for efficiency!? No, couldn't be. Because every single claim, even when their are multiple in one envelope, has that page in multiple languages. Perhaps the abrupt language change is anticipated as one peruses a single piece of mail. There are always 2 pieces of paper to discard for one that is even remotely relevant.Very remotely. The only thing predictable about the EoB's from Blue Cross -- they must be opened within reach of the recycle bin.
ReplyDeletea forest of trees went into all of that paper
ReplyDelete