So What Fresh New Hell Is This?
Dracula may be an incredibly terrifying and evil creature, but he is at least a known
quantity. There is something comforting about having parameters for good and bad on an entity to help us categorize it.
One would have thought that this blog and all of us assorted angry people would have
at least listed the limits of the evilness of the insurance industry. But that is not true. There has now appeared on the horizon, and is now coming to a theater near you, a new and fresh version of evil.
In the old days, when the insurance company paid for our services, they paid by check. Sometimes an aggregate check and those were always very nice to have coming in. I used to love Blue Cross Blue Shield Day, as it would be two to three times a month; a very large portion of the income for the clinic.
Then they started doing electronic transfers, which was in fact, in very many ways, far superior.
So insurance executives wanted to keep holding our money longer so they could keep making interest on the money before it left their hands – and the electronic transfer put a crimp on that. They also, just for fun, enjoy letting doctors know precisely what they think of us (like a beloved workhorse or donkey.)
And they found the perfect way.
What they have done is…
started to pay for services rendered by faxing a sheet with a credit card number on it and that credit card number would have an amount tied to it. So, we would have to go physically to our credit card processing machine and tap in the entire long number and then tap in that amount and then that amount of money would then go into our checking account.
But of course, it would go in minus the credit card processing fee. Most business owners if you tell them about credit card processing fees don’t even know the percentage they are being charged, or if there is a per transaction charge as well. They consider that just a cost of business and they’re happy to have the brand-new fancy credit card processing machine, and they don’t think about the percentage which is anywhere from one and a half to three percent.
However, if you were to tell those same people that the sales tax was going to go from eight percent to nine and a half percent, they would go absolutely crazy and start cleaning their rifles ready for the rebellion.
The insurance company gets to keep the money longer because it takes longer to physically do this process, and the credit card company that we utilize, our processing company, takes the percentage that we pay to keep the money longer.
It’s quite awful, period. It’s quite terrible. It is, in fact, a fresh new take on hell. That’s why I prefer the Dracula. We know he’s bad. He eats men and women. He kills them. He eats children, he impales people, he’s awful, but don’t insurance companies start to feel like the same sort of thing?
Now if you are doing ok in the bank balance it is possible to call the insurance companies and demand that they send a physical check. That lets them keep the money longer, but mailing a check costs about 5 dollars to them, which always makes me feel better.
I wonder how you handle Anthem Blue Cross. Their virtual credit cards have no phone number to decline and instead request a paper check. They are not very frequent, so I often just bite the bullet and lose the service fee…….calling Anthem and requesting a representative……IT IS NOT WORTH IT!!!!
in all honesty, there is no way it’s worth it for me to call, because that would be 20 to 30 minutes on hold a brief talk 10 to 15 more minutes on hold and then the resolution if you were lucky. My office manager does this for me and there are some insurance companies that we just tap in the numbers. Most of them tend to be either the Blue Cross or the marketplace products. As I said, this is a fresh new take on hell. It is very difficult to get around. As is hell.