Ohiocore

Get this. I got a pissy letter from Anthem Blue Cross / Blue Shield this month. In classic form, it says:

We value you as a customer and would like to continue providing you with quality service. However, we need your assistance, as we have not received full payment for your health benefits policy. If your premium payment has been delayed, please note that full payment must be forwarded immediately to Anthem upon receipt of this notice. Please see the reverse side of this letter for the total premium amount owed.

If Anthem does not receive your premium payment, any claims for services provided after 09/30/2003 will not be processed and your policy will automatically cancel effective 09/30/2003....


Well they sure sounded serious, so I flipped over the letter and it said:
Total Premium Due: $0.00

Thanks a lot, chumps. I did the normal thing. I sent nothing.

Then a week later my bill for the month arrived. Everything was the same except there was an extra line:
Refund: $155.70

Presumably this has something to do with the phantom $0 non-payment letter? But now they are charging me a refund!? I have no idea what the people who work there are telling themselves.

It isn't listed under the "CURRENT PERIOD" section.
It isn't listed in the "Retroactive Adjustments" line.
It just shows up in the "ACCOUNT SUMMARY" as a single line:
Refund: $155.70

I can't figure why they think I owe them $155.70 extra. I was on the phone for 25 minutes and 30 seconds today w/ one of them. She couldn't figure it out. Her coworker couldn't figure it out. Neither of their computers could figure it out, same for the "other system" they checked in.

They say they'll call me back.

Elliott Smith died. Apparent suicide: signle stab to the chest.

I found out first from Robert Duffy's site/forum, Done Waiting.

Sad news about a sad man.

An interesting social experiment: Take the kids of today and see how they react to the video games of yesteryear. Was Commodore64 really timeless? Will conventions we took for granted be foreign and confusing to the X/gen/boxers?
EGM finds out.

Pat Robertson said on air, several times, he wants to "nuke" the State Department. Clearly, that man is an ass. Same story at The Guardian and Salon. Just imagine the backlash there would be if he were a conservative Muslim preacher instead of Christian. It would be sick.

Oh yeah, you'd have to imagine he didn't give $10,000 to John Ashcroft's campaign also...

From the (Pakistani) Daily Times: "Pakistan on Wednesday morning successfully test-fired an indigenously-developed surface-to-surface medium-range ballistic missile, the Shaheen-I (Hatf-IV)."

That makes 2 nukes in 1 week... for a country that isn't even nominally a democracy last time I checked (Gen. Musharraf having seized control).

And of course Schwarzenegger becomes Governor of California.

So, it's all happening regardless. DeLay gets his Texas redistri... er, Re-Republicaning. Districts jerrymandered all to hell and back, some stretching ~400 miles. Yes I know it's Texas. And yes it is still dishonest, corrupt and lame. Even the El Paso Times will tell you that the Southern part of the state is getting screwed. Entire counties go w/o a locally centered district!

Redistricting is a 10-year job (following up on each decade's census changes). That's why this instance is so clearly out of line: "Two years ago, GOP leaders supported a new congressional plan drawn by federal judges, but they changed their position after last year's election results." The amount of political energy and attention spent on this is enormous. Beyond both of the Democratic boycotts that were forced out of state by the Governor's "deployment" of State Troopers to arrest them, they've been hashing it back and forth for months. As a result, "the March 2 primary will probably have to be postponed. But DeLay said moving the election date would be worth the expense and inconvenience."

Surprise, surprise.

We are at a 40-year high for cases of Whooping Cough. Get that.... Whooping Cough. File under health care triumphs of a "first world" nation. (Source: ABC World News Tongiht w/ Peter Jennings, today)

They never say a good word about anybody you've ever heard of. Everything is corruption and oppression and class warfare and exploitation and crass conumerism etc. etc. etc. That's what it takes for them. So you know it means something that even the Socialists loved Johnny Cash.

Cash’s sound in these years is infused with the confidence of a booming post-WWII America and the emergence of a young and restless working class.

Actually, they aren't so bad: they like Dave Van Ronk, Hank Snow, Dale Watson and Iris DeMent too. Biggups.