When I hang up with the health insurance man, he reminds me to give him five stars. “Please. It’s really important to my job.”
It wasn’t a five star experience. Nothing is with Anthem Blue Cross. I can count the five star insurance experiences I’ve had on one hand. Plus, in this case I’m calling because of a problem Anthem made up. They randomly changed my primary care doctor without warning, voiding all my referrals, including one that took me almost the entire year to get, that I now can’t make an appointment for. How am I supposed to give them five stars after that?
The man didn’t have a solution, only that he’d have to escalate the ticket and call me back. Which is better than the man I talked to last week, who reduced me to tears during a (scouts honor, not exaggerating) 75 minute phone call in which he could offer nothing, and spent long stretches of silence before saying “so… have I solved your problem??”
He wouldn’t escalate me to a supervisor because before he could he wanted to resolve my problem. Because if he didn’t, he would lose his job. But he couldn’t resolve my problem, because the company made it impossible for him to resolve.
The rating emails for both of these men have sat untouched in my inbox. Anthem holds them like a gun to an innocent persons head in a bank robbery. Five stars, or this guy gets it.
I know I’m thinking too much about this, and I should be honest in my rating. One star. This is definitely a one star experience. But I think about the delivery guy who dropped off our new couch this week. He reminded me how important five stars was to him. Then, later that night, he texted me again: “Sorry for the intrusion, miss, but if I don’t get five stars, I won’t get more work this week.” I’d intended to give him five stars because he didn’t literally set my house on fire, but I forgot. Zero stars for me… what if his children are hungry tonight?
Hypocrite that I am, I also use the five star system constantly. When Anthem assigned me the new doctor, I immediately googled her, begging the universe that I’d been assigned a five star doctor.
The last doctor was a zero star doctor. He was fresh out of med school, maybe 23. I begged him for physical therapy and he wouldn’t prescribe it. He didn’t really believe I was in pain until the x ray, which took months of hoops to get, confirmed that I wasn’t lying. My bones told the truth he couldn’t believe from my mouth. But he still didn’t want to prescribe PT. He wanted to start with a surgeon. He will prescribe PT if you need it, the doctor explained. I tried to explain back that it always takes months to get in with a specialist and he wouldn’t budge. Dozens of physical therapy appointments, I have a feeling, is less appealing to the insurance company than one quick appointment with a surgeon who will blame my “lifestyle” for my body’s problems. Zero stars.
When I googled the new doctor, she had 3 stars. One five star review (“she saved my life!”) and two one stars. “She never listens”, “She almost killed my mom”. Yikes.
I look back at my email. The insurance agent’s rating email stares back at me. “Please, five stars. It’s very important.”
I know most people would just give an honest rating. But I think about the times I’ve tried that. Nothing happens. The company doesn’t reach out to correct the experience. They just, I assume, fire the guy who couldn’t get the system to make me give him five stars. I don’t want that guy to be fired. I mean, he’s an insufferable dumbass. But I know how hard it is to get a job. And I know it’s not his fault. I don’t want to assign the stars to him. Who does it help?
This may be a controversial opinion, but I think even insufferable dumbasses deserve jobs. Or at least enough money to eat, to care for their children, to buy the occasional sweet treat that makes life feel bearable. I don’t take this position because I’m a kind person. I think it’s practical. Other human beings exist, even the ones I find exhausting and intolerable, and the truth is the more pain a person is in, the more exhausting and intolerable they become.
I know that because I’m in pain. And when it gets really bad I hear myself snap at my husband, my neighbor, the fucking Anthem guy. What’s the point of putting someone out of work with a low rating, knowing that the next person who comes through will be up against the exact same inefficient, unequal, fucked up system?
No CEO has ever asked me for a star rating of their performance. The CEO of Anthem can do whatever she wants: raise my premium, deny my claims, mandate a never-ending web of phone calls to exhaust me and sap me of any energy I might’ve used to make doctor’s appointments or contribute to society. When do I get to give Gail K. Boudreaux zero fucking stars? Never, because she’s actually doing great at her job: enriching the shareholders. I’m not the customer, I’m the product. That’s how it is. She doesn’t need five stars for that, though. She gets a nice bonus instead. 20 mil in 2023. A few bucks towards her paycheck for every appointment I can’t make, like a cartoon villain strengthening herself on the misery of others. Some Monster’s Inc. shit.
As I consider the ratings emails, my friend calls. She’s having a day too. I get in the car and drive over to her house, sprawl out on her sofa. Her dog jumps on my chest, and we both cry a little bit, and then scheme about how to get her celebrity crush to notice her. We imagine a world where she has a fancy British passport, where we have jobs with easy health insurance, where the President isn’t the President. Maybe instead somebody who sees healthcare as a human right, not a for-profit scheme. My friend’s dog falls asleep on my chest, running in his sleep, like dogs do. My friend hands me a cookie- “the cutest one in the bakery, because you deserve it”, she tells me. And I wonder if Gail K. Boudreaux has ever felt the class solidarity of your broke bestie buying you the best cookie in the bakery case because your health insurance sucks. Probably not. It’s a silver lining. I give it five stars.