July 30th, 2013

Numbers Game

by Wayno & Piraro

Bizarro is brought to you today by ASD (Abdominal Strings Disorder)

My annual checkup is coming up soon and I’m dreading it. Not because I’m afraid they’ll find something wrong with me or I don’t enjoy paying a relative stranger to insert a rubber-clad finger into my butt, but because the process will take a couple of hours out of my day and cost me money to get bad news or no news at all. My doctor will also chastise me for not following his instructions last year to get up at the ass-crack of dawn (two anal references in the first paragraph; a new record for me!) and wait in line at a clinic to have my blood taken for routine testing. Blech!

Yes, I know things could be a lot worse. I could be forced to spend a couple of hours watching them tape Justin Bieber’s new music video or have lunch with Snookie. But an increasingly large part of me just wants to ignore doctors entirely until I’m too sick to recover on my own and just take my chances. I’ve not had medical insurance of any kind for over ten years now because I despise the way the American health industry is set up and it pains me to give a single penny to an industry that is built on a business model that takes as much money from consumers as possible while it denies as many of the promised benefits as is legally allowed. My medical expenses in the last decade have been many thousands of dollars LESS than if I’d been carrying health insurance.

Yes, I know that if I get into an accident or come down with a dreaded disease, I’ll go bankrupt. I’ve not experienced that so I can’t speak with authority, but I think I’d rather die than fund another insurance executive’s vacation on the French Riviera. Is that a childish and irresponsible way to live? Perhaps. But I like to think of it as putting my life and finances on the line for the sake of principle. (Which will be precious little solace if I should lose my legs in a traffic accident.)

I wonder if my bitterness toward this process will show up in the blood tests that I’m likely to put off for yet another year?

CLASSICS CORNER: Today’s prehistoric Bizarro cartoon is about one of those unexpected wrinkles in the bedsheets of life for which there is no insurance available.