Today's phone call with Anthem went marginally better than yesterday's, in that I got to tell three people that their corporate actions were directly contributing to the lack of trust in the existing system and the growing belief in universal health care. I also got to cut off a medical professional three times with "you're not my wife's doctor, and I don't trust you."

I hope the Director of Behavioral Psych comes down with Herod's Evil.

I think what really made this call special for me is that the disconnect between their position and mine was stark from the outset. They're looking at populations and groups, studying meta-analyses and making decisions based on statistics. Presented with an individual case that clearly violates the norm, their answer was like any good liberal to leap back to their Big Data and proclaim that they did the right thing based on the literature, ignoring what the doctors involved in the case want.

I also took the time to rub their collective nose in the fact that every insurance company refused to pay for SRS and forced me to cough up $50k out of pocket across two people to get life-saving medical care because their "meta-analysis" said my needs were "cosmetic." That alone was enough to make me not trust their boards of experts. The doctor wanted off the call after that. Literally, that was when he said "I don't think this call is going to get us anywhere."