Phone Rage

My primary care physician told me that he wanted me to have a CT calcium score exam ("a coronary calcium scan which is a quick, convenient and noninvasive way of evaluating the amount of calcified (hard) plaque in your heart vessels."). But it has been three weeks and my health insurance provider Humana still has not provided me with an authorization agreeing to pay for it. The CT calcium score exam is something that other doctors have ordered for me, but in the past my Humana insurance did not cover it, and I do not want to pay $99 for a test that may or may not be of value, since Humana seems to think that it is not of value. So I called Humana today to see what the situation is.

The three week delay on my heart test is enough to give me phone rage, but my explosive feelings today are on top of several failed attempts to even get through to Humana. To start with the Humana automated system could not hear me answer its screening questions, as usual, By now I have an automated response to it of phone rage. Then the first Humana representative persisted in speaking so softly and she was so muffled that I had to repeatedly asked her to speak up, so she hard-heartedly put me through extensive ID-ing as punishment. I have difficulty getting enough air in my lungs to chant out my address, including zip code, that some Humana representatives demand so I hung up before I started cursing. The next Humana representative got prickly when I asked her to repeat her muffled, unusual, and rapidly spoken name, so I lost my temper said "F*** you kid" and hung up. This is not unusual behavior for me at this age but it is certainly sad and unacceptable. When I was younger I did not act this way. I do not know how to correct this. This is not who I want to be; and too much phone rage could precipitate a heart attack, yak, yak, yak, yak.

This is my follow up online portal message to my PCP:

My insurance provider Humana told me today that they have received no authorization from my PCP for me to have a CT calcium score exam (which my doctor told he that he would request on 05-21-21. I would like to have this exam if Humana pays for it. I am asking that Dr. Jones fax his authorization for me to have a CT calcium score exam to Humana, Fax #800-266-3022 with his doctor's note stating that it is "medically necessary to have this test done."

Note that I am 72 years old and I now have many heart episodes, for example, the week that I talked to the doctor's nurse I reported to her that "...my heart skittered and lurched for fourteen hours, until just before 4:00 AM the next morning, I simply could not calm it. I finally took a nitroglycerin pill and was able to sleep fitfully for six hours."

Phone Rage

by Annmarie Throckmorton 2021