Hello, and thank you for choosing Garbage Health Insurance. Or, if you are receiving coverage through your employer, thank you for having Garbage Health Insurance unwillingly thrust upon you. We appreciate the lack of choice you have, and we are anxious to start juicing you via monthly premiums as soon as possible.
Our records currently indicate you are enrolled in our “Bronze Minus” plan. If this information is incorrect, or if a Bernie Sanders presidency has made the for-profit healthcare industry extinct, please call member services. Our “Bronze Minus” plan offers the lowest monthly premiums and deductibles higher than some small island nation’s GDP. Of our tiered plans, this is the one that most feels like extortion. We recommend this plan to brash twenty-somethings who feel like they’re invincible and have no plans on ever getting sick or aging, as well as suckers who feel burdened by an additional three hundred dollars per month and would like to throw it away. This plan is best supplemented with a steady supply of phoenix tears, water from the Holy Grail, or any other MacGuffin that grants immortality. Please note that we also offer “Silver,” “Gold,” and “Platinum” plans, which offer their own confusing array of benefits and a frustrating lack of care. If you would like to switch to our “Silver,” “Gold,” or “Platinum” plans, please consult your checking account, your student loan payments, and your one-bedroom apartment you share with two adult roommates, and reassess.
Full details of your plan are in the 500-page book you received with this letter. We specially designed it with an extra-large font to waste as much paper as possible. The book is not available online as a PDF for you to search at your convenience, nor is the information available on our website that is designed entirely in Flash and is down for maintenance every other day. We suggest storing your copy somewhere where you will lose it within the week. To briefly summarize your coverage and benefits:
For medical bills under ten thousand, you pay the full amount, plus the “vig,” which is a term we picked up from re-watching The Sopranos. For medical bills between ten and fifty thousand, we’ll begrudgingly pay sixty percent. We’ll be really dragging our feet on it, though. You’re gonna have to pry that check from our hands, and we do mean that literally. We have a guy with incredible grip strength at our offices in Delaware. Big guy. Arm wrestler. He doesn’t like to be bothered. For medical bills over one hundred thousand, we cover sixty-five percent of the cost of any item you purchase to aid in your inevitable suicide. The other thirty-five percent must be paid out of pocket by you or your closest living relative — we’ll send someone down to collect at the funeral.
Included in this book you’ll never read is a list of in-network doctors. Rest assured, none of them are within driving distance or accessible via public transportation. There’s one general practitioner out in the sticks, but he’s very busy and his office hardly picks up the phone. You’ll be lucky if you get a physical this calendar year. Some of our in-network doctors aren’t even doctors. We proudly work with psychics, spiritual healers, con artists, and a handful of quacks. Our network is constantly shrinking, so try not to develop a personal relationship with any of them.
At this point, you might be asking yourself, “Why do I even bother having health insurance at all?” Rather than reflect on the immorality of an industry that profits by giving you the least amount of the service you pay for, think of us like a Netflix or Spotify. But unlike those companies, instead of gaining instant access to your favorite movies and music, you pay thirty times that for the privilege of spending ninety minutes on the phone trying to figure out why we billed you five hundred dollars for a mental health visit because you casually mentioned you were seeing a therapist during your annual physical.
Thank you once again for choosing Garbage Health Insurance. We’re constantly improving our billing process and would love to hear your thoughts on how we can further bury you in medical debt. If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, you can reach member services by falling to your knees and cursing the heavens between the hours of 9 AM and 11 AM Japan Standard Time, Monday thru Monday.