They said the form was seven pages long, the fine print twelve,
They said my claim was under review, please help yourself,
The operator’s voice was warm and smooth as motor oil,
She said we value your concern and left me there to toil,
The deductible is thirty thousand, co-pay’s twenty more,
The specialist’s not in-network, but here’s an open door
To a payment plan that’s flexible, just sign away your spine,
We’ll garnish it in portions, sir, the paperwork looks fine.
I’ve got the pre-existing condition blues,
The coverage gap is wider than my will to choose,
They’ll cover half an aspirin if the planets all align,
But the catastrophic policy costs more than I make in nine,
Nine months of overtime with benefits declined,
I’ve got the pre-existing, pre-existing,
The pre-existing condition blues.
The EOB arrived in forty pages thick,
It itemized the saline drip, the latex gloves, the stick
They used to draw a vial of blood to test what they already knew,
The anesthesiologist was out-of-network too,
So I owe a guy named Gerald forty-seven hundred bucks
For fifteen minutes standing in a room and asking what the heck,
The surgery was covered minus what they call the spread,
Which is the gap between what medicine costs and what insurance said.
They hired a team of actuaries working forty floors above
The people dying in the lobby, and they found that what they love
Is a risk-adjusted portfolio that minimizes bleed,
Which means the sickest people are exactly who they don’t need,
The wellness app they gave me has a chatbot named Renee,
She wants me to do breathing work and journal every day,
She cannot authorize a scan, she cannot fill a script,
But she’s got seventeen affirmations for when hope has slipped.
The appeal takes ninety days and comes back with a letter
That regrets to inform me things are not getting better,
There’s an expedited process for emergencies and dire,
Which means I have to prove I’m dying to the man they hire
To review the reviews of the reviews of my case,
The peer-to-peer review is where I make my final case
To a doctor on the phone who’s never seen my chart or spine,
But he’s read the two-page summary and the answer is decline.