Hang in there, they fight a war of attrition. If they make it hard enough some (many?) folks give up or "do it the way the HMO bean counters want" Make sure you are right and reasonable then demand they give you want you want/need or produce legit reasons why they won't.
We recently changed HMOs from Kaiser Permanente to Pacificare. Copay for a prescription went up 300% and you only get a 30 day supply instead of 100 day supply, that comes to 10X what we were paying.
A few days ago I picked a mess of greens to fix the next day. It was poke salat AKA poke weed and must be prepared correctly as, unprepared, all parts of the plant are poisonous. You boil it and toss out the water. Boil it again and toss out the water. Boil again adding bacon or sausage or whatever you like on your greens. Well my wife (multi generation city girl) forgot that you can't eat them as salad greens (salad - salat sounds a lot alike). She made salads for the three of us (me, mom, and herself) Mom was down to one of the ponds fishing, I was tractoring, and she was hungry so she ate her salad and waited for us to show up for supper. There were some lucky coincidences. She had a book that IDs plants and was curious so she looked up Poke Salat. Not there, just Poke Weed. She tells me this and I tell her it is the same stuff. She says uhoh I just ate a Poke Salat salad. We ditched the other salads, uneaten, and called the pison control center (Nationwide 1-800-222-1222). the treatment is activated charcoal to absorb the poison and carry it harmlessly through your syustem.
As it was after 8PM and 25 miles from any hope of an open pharmacy, we took off for civilization. Two pharmacies didn't have it and everyone wasa closed, closing, or nearing closing. I went to emergency room of hospital and asked it they had activated charcoal and they said yes but first yo have to go to be seen by the triage nurse. I say fine, give us the charcoal to take and then we will go to triage. NO WAY. We go to the triage nurses room but she is with another patient. Whe she comes to door to say "next!" I interrupt her and say my wife ingested poison (described it and the poison control center's recommendation). The nurse points at a set of benches with a dozen people waiting to see her before they can even start filling out the voluminous paperwork required before they can get any treatment. I mention it won't do any good to get the treatment after we wait because the contents of her stomach will have been partially absorbed and the rest will be in the intestines getting absorbed where the charcoal will not "catch up" to the poison. So she takes my wife in and measures her height, weight, DOB, menopausal info, pulse, resperation, blood pressure, drug sensitivity, health plan, and on and on and on.
I interrupt again to enquire if we could maybe administer the recommened treatment and get all the other info later. NO WAY, we have a structured process! All this done, we get to go fill out the admissions paperwork with the clerical staff. I again make my plea for the charcoal. Along the way I mention that you can buy it over the counter, it isn't subject to abuse, it couldn't possibly trigger a malpractice suit. Sorry, not our procedure! Eventually, a nurse sees my wife and says it is too bad we didn't get her the charcoal sooner as it may be about 30 minutes too late to help. I nearly lost it then but controlled myself sufficiently to tell her I had been there asking for the bloody &^*$&#ing charcoal for over 40 minutes so far, could we please get on wilth it rather than waste more time discussing coulda woulda shoulda.
So they say do you feel any nausea? Well by this time nausea was begining. So they give her an anti-nausea shot and wait 30 min to give her the charcoal which she throws up due to increasing nausea from the poison. Up comes the medication but no salad as it was mostly in the intestines now. Another anti-nausea shot, wait 40 min, drink more charcoal stuff. Lay down for 40 min then they come in and say OK get up you can go now. She gets up, throws up and they say well it was down long enough to get whatever was still in the stomach, too bad you didn't bring her in so we could have started her 1/2 hour sooner, prior to the nausea starting due to absorption of the poison. I just let it slide with only fleeting thoughts mahem.
Two days later now and she is just fine with no aftereffects except she doesn't want any poke salat, irrespective of how safe it is, how good it tastes, or for a milion dollars, or all the tea in a generic asian country to remain nameless here (not proper etiquette or PC to mention the country directly).
Today we find that the cholesterol medication we have been taking for years after having tried several to find something that works, isn't on THE LIST with Pacificare so sans doctor consultation, tests, or rationale except this is what the bean counters want us to get, we have been switched. I'll be interested to see what my blood work shows in a month or so. If the stuff isn't as good, I'll launch a full cort press to get THE RIGHT STUFF.
So, are you and I the exceptions in our FUN experiences or is everyone getting the run around by the HMO bean counters and the medical people who are more interested in following their structured procedure that lowers their liablity than they are in helping the patient through the application of common sense?
Patrick