Jumping through hoops

It never fails to amaze me how tough health insurance companies make it for people to get anything done. Last week I bought a new pair of Birkenstock sandals to replace my aging 16 year old pair that are on their last legs, so naturally, this means that I have to get the 1½" lift put on the left shoe that I need before I can consider wearing them. I decided to call an insurance approved provider to get the work done, but in the process, I found out how many hoops I will have to jump through to get this done and get it all covered - IF, in the end, they decide to do so, which they sometimes won't, making the excuse of it going under my nefarious "deductible" of $1000 a year. So what I had to do was to call the insurance approved provider, Yanke Bionics, and it turns out that I needed to make an appointment to come in and work with the orthotist. OK, fine, I've done that before, but I chose to go to the Kent office, located in my orthopaedic surgeon's office because my thinking was that if there was any question regarding the necessity of even having a lift done, Dr. Mineo, my doctor, would be right there to approve it without having to have all kinds of faxes and phone calls like I do with their Akron office just to get approval for my lift work to be done there. So I called my insurance provider to talk to them about it and they asked me if the work had been properly authorized. I asked, by whom? They said that my orthopaedic surgeon would have to authorize the work for them to even consider covering it. OK, so this meant calling my orthopaedic surgeon's office. My hope was that I would not need to make an additional appointment just to see my doctor just to get the authorization, costing me another $20 in co-pays just to do so. Turns out I don't have to do that, but I did have to ask his physician's assistant to make a phone call to the insurance company to get the work authorized by Crystal Clinic. Never mind that I've had this leg problem since I was 14 and have been wearing a corrective lift since 1998 - I still have to jump through a million hoops and make tons of phone calls just to get the lift work done by an insurance approved provider, and even then, I suspect I'll still be out a fair amount of money anyway if my provider sticks it under my deductible. Is it any wonder that America's health care system is so broken when you're forced to deal with all this nonsense?

THE POWER OF MUSIC
Right now I am listening to a recording of the Requiems of Gabriel Fauré and Maurice Durufle, both of which I have sung with the Akron Symphony Chorus in years past. They are both such beautiful pieces of music and a change from big bombastic Requiems like that of Berlioz or even in some ways, Verdi. These two pieces of music in particular provided me with a great deal of comfort a few years ago when a close friend of mine died very suddenly and unexpectedly of a massive stroke. Other friends have passed away suddenly in recent years but none has hit me harder than my friend Mike's in November of 2006. I had a very hard time accepting that he was gone so quickly like that. We'd been girlfriend and boyfriend for many years in the late 1980's and early 90's and it was he who introduced me to Irish Week at the Augusta Heritage Arts Center in Elkins, WV. We went down there together for several years and met many wonderful people and I still go each and every summer and have a wonderful time there. Since Mike's death, it's been a bit bittersweet, though. Somehow, knowing that he's gone and I will never see him again and be able to share my Augusta experiences with him lessens the experience just a little bit. Admittedly, after we broke up, we didn't see each other much because we sort of traveled in different circles, but we'd occasionally run into each other at concerts and festivals and chat about what was going on in our lives and we'd send occasional e-mails back and forth as well. These two requiem masses of Fauré and Durufle became mainstays in the months after Mike's death and I listened to them a great deal to find some sort of way of trying to make peace with his death. I grew up Catholic and although I have not been a practicing one since about 1972, still, these two masses provided a real tonic to my grief because they are more peaceful requiems instead of ones that emphasize "the trumpets shall sound" and all that other "Dies Irae" stuff about the day of judgement. I can do without all that, thank you. I in particular love the"Pie Jesu" and "In Paradisum" movements of the Fauré requiem because I'd rather see death as a peaceful thing than with dread and fear like the Dies Irae of so many requiems makes it all seem. Music truly can prove to be quite therapeutic, as I found out a few years ago, and I still love listening to these two pieces of music for their lyrical and peaceful approach to passing on.