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Okay, so don’t start laughing, but I had an extra 15 minutes and decided I’d call my insurance company to figure something out. I ended up spending more than 15 minutes and still didn’t figure anything out.

Let me back up. Back on New Year’s Day 2007, when this awesome year was just minutes old, I decided that I would finally do something about the smoking, the weight, and the general health thing. So on January 9th, I finished the last cigarette in my last pack, and about two weeks later, I started to ride my bike to work and jog. In April, I started taking classes at the Krav Maga studio in Pflugerville, which amped everything up (like way up).

Results? Lost 20 pounds of fat, put on 15 pounds of muscle, increased my endurance by 100x, dropped two pant sizes. Injuries so far: sprained ACL, right knee; partially dislocated left thumb; bruised rotator thingie on my right shoulder, etc. Not too bad.

So today I call up my insurance company. I won’t actually shout out who they are, but their name rhymes with Unicare. Oh, oops. Anyway, I had an extra 15 minutes to spare, as I was driving to a client to pick up a DVD so I could convert it to MPEG for a landing page they were putting together.

So I call while driving (yes, I’m bad) and navigate through their obscenely detailed auto respondent menus. I finally figure out what I think I need (policy change) and wait 6 minutes listening to some easy listening muzakification of some long-dead true American jazz artist’s work. At precisely 6 minutes and 40 seconds, a young lady comes on and asks me for my group ID, my birthdate, and my phone number (never mind that I’ve already told the computerized voice all of this). She asks what I need and I tell her…how do I change my policy to reflect my not-so-new non-smoking policy?

She puts me on hold for 2-3 minutes, and then an earnest young man comes on. We repeat the whole shtick with group ID, phone number, date-of-birth, mother’s maiden name, then he fools around with my computer records for about four minutes and realizes that I’m a small business owner and punts me off to someone else.

I’m on hold for another three minutes (and by now, sitting in the client’s parking lot, not wanting to hang up and start over) and then a young lady comes on the line and asks me what I need. I tell her what I want, and also inform her that I’m getting a bit impatient. She shrugs that off and asks for my group ID, phone number, and date of birth. I almost, *almost* don’t give it to her. Instead, I sigh and say it all one more time.

By this point, the two guys taking a smoke break in the parking lot could probably assume my identity, but Wedon’tcare can’t keep my info up on their computer screens when they transfer me?

In any case, she sees that I’m a group policy holder within the small business group, so she decides to transfer me to her senior account manager, who after two more minutes, comes on and informs me that it doesn’t matter if I change my status to non-smoker, as it won’t affect my rate.

“Say what?” I ask, glancing at the little call timer on my cell phone. We’re at 27 minutes and change.

“You have a group policy, so changing your status to non-smoker won’t affect your rate.”

“So,” I venture helpfully, “If I were a quadruple amputee with cerebral palsy, my group rate would be the same as an Olympic athlete’s?”;

“Sir, HIPAA regulations keep me from discussing these kinds of issues with you.”

WTF? Anyway, I thank the senior account manager for her help, chastise them for taking so long to get me this information, and she refers me to their web site for my future informational needs.

There you have it…half an hour of my life I’ll never get back.

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