Just got a $400 bill for the blood work for my yearly physical. Routine stuff, should be almost totally covered by my insurance (which isn't cheap). In the past, it has.

Naturally the bill is due within days of me receiving it, despite the visit being months ago. It just takes that long for anything to wind through the labyrinth-like entrails of coding, billing, and negotiation. Also I get the sense there's some high-pressure tactics here.

I waited until business hours then I spoke to an AI voice agent. These things now include small breathing sounds and "background noise" that sounds like they exist in a call center instead of the bowels of a data center that is deafening and poisoning everyone within a quarter mile. It still responds too quickly and too cheerfully to be human, though. This thing finally directs me to a person.

She sounds like she is in India. She also sounds terminally bored, which is good. That is the proper response and anything else puts me on guard. Turns out the bill was submitted with my middle initial, while the name on my insurance card is without my middle initial. This is a pretext, of course, the insurance company could easily make that connection (and hundreds of other services do). But they are hoping I would just pay the bill. She resubmits. Now I wait another two months for another bill, or perhaps nothing gets changed and the first bill is now overdue, with fines, or going to collections. Whatever.

What a fucking privilege to live in this system. I'm more insulted by how much of my doctor's time this wastes, since her time is so much more valuable than mine.