Danger - complaining follows

I have just a few minutes to write before I have to leave for lunch with long time friends. We do this every Friday. Whoever is available comes to lunch at a restaurant chosen the week before. It's a fun thing to do and a great way to stay in touch with friends who have moved out of the immediate area, but are still withing a reasonable drive.

Anyway in the short time I have, I want to complain about health insurance. I recently received this year's booklet from Blue Cross and Blue Shield (my secondary insurance company - Medicare is now my primary). The booklet, actually is more like a book at 134 pages long. I was trying to check up on dental benefits as well as what has changed. They seem to have eliminated an index in this year's book, so I had to flip through a lot of pages to find anything about dental. When I found it, I couldn't figure out what they were telling me! I would like to compare this year's benefits, which I know have been reduced, to last year's. However, last year they never sent me a book, so I checked online. Now, I'm not sure I can find out what last year's benefits were! If I want to compare plans from other companies, I'll have to go online anyway. It's very hard to tell what is being offered. Frankly, Blue Cross and Blue Shield is getting a real easy ride with me. They used to have to pay all my health care bills. Now, Medicare pays most of the bill and B&B just picks up the difference. But, did they reduce what I pay them for health insurance? Surely you jest! So I pay twice as much for health insurance (Medicare and B&B) and get just about the same benefits. Except, of course, they are reducing the benefits this year and raising the cost. Please, President-elect Obama - do something about health insurance!!

Today I got a quote on how much my new glasses will cost me. Ouch!! I will go to another place and see what their prices are, but probably won't see much difference. This is in addition to whatever the eye exam will cost. Hopefully, the health insurance will pay for part of that.

I'm very glad that I am basicallly healthy and don't have to deal with health care providers and insurers very often. I haven't the patience for it. I guess you could say that I am not a patient patient. Sorry, I couldn't resist the pun. Punning runs in my family. My brothers are even better (or worse) than I.

Next week, I will be complaining about the cost of car repairs, most likely. Car goes in on Wednesday for a scheduled maintenance. It'll probably cost about the same as the glasses.

Time for lunch now. Sorry for the ranting on this blog. Will try to find something nice to say next time.