What I look like when I'm on hold with Anthem Blue Cross during its death throes

So, a while back I posted what I look like while I'm on the phone with Anthem Blue Cross and eating a breadstick instead of smoking a cigarette. You can refresh your memory here. Today, I tried for the fifth time to contact Anthem in order to remove the automatic withdrawal of Sophie's premium from our checking account. I'll remind you that the evil and disastrous Affordable Care Act (that's sarcasm, there) enabled us to finally add Sophie to our health plan, and in doing so we are getting an entirely new health insurance plan with  entirely better benefits with an entirely different company for an entirely better price. Sophie used to have her own plan, an abysmal one, whose premium had been jacked up over 100% over the last few years and was diligently removed from our checking account by Anthem each month. The rest of our family had a separate individual policy with Anthem, equally as abysmal with an even greater rate of jacked-up premium, and we paid that one by check each month.

Anyhoo.

I've been trying to cancel the automatic withdrawal of Sophie's payment for weeks and have not been able to get through to a customer "service" agent. When I was connected to a human service agent -- ONCE -- I was sent on one of those hellish odysseys through the windowless warrens of Anthem and finally landed behind door number 6,345,876 and told to hold. Again.  The picture above was taken during that hold time, and in lieu of a bread stick, I kept a pen in my mouth and rolled its smooth, cold chartreuseness in my mouth while listening to many, many bars of a requiem that I imagined was for the death throes of Anthem and its connection to my family. My normal appreciation for classical music reached a breaking point, though, and when a voice finally broke into some seventeenth century dirge, it told me that due to the Affordable Care Act, we are unable to help you with your problem. Please call back at another time. In lieu of chewing on pens or smoking bread sticks, I went for the rectal Valium that Anthem has so kindly allowed us to purchase at a reasonable price.

Just kidding. That would have been an unauthorized usage of a powerful narcotic. We prefer weed over here.






To make a long story short, I have contacted my bank and put a stop to the automatic withdrawals that way. On February 1st, when the new policy goes into effect, I will be walking through the streets of Los Angeles with a burning blue cross. If anyone would like to join me, please do. There will be bread sticks and rectal Valium.