The joys of an HMO

*Warning- This post may make the guys out there a little uncomfortable- it’s about girly-parts; or more specifically seeing a girly-parts doctor when you’re covered by a shitty HMO.

So last week was time for my dreaded annual exam. Lucky for me, I’m covered under the wonderful Kaiser Permanente, so I knew they’d take good care of me. I called to make my appointment about two weeks ago, and requested a female doctor (sorry guys, I just feel more comfortable going to a woman). Hmmm….no appointments until February. So, I ended up making the appointment with a male doctor. Do I know my gyno? No, because in the wonderful land of Kaiser, doctors come and go way too often for you to have the same doctor twice.

Well, it has become painfully clear that Kaiser is most certainly a large corporation, who’s only concern in profit. I am just imagining some of their big decision-making meetings: “How can we save/make more money? Well, I don’t think women feel exposed enough when they visit us, so instead of those cheap paper gowns, let’s switch to even cheaper paper shirts. That 2 feet of thin paper that covers their asses is a whopping $1 more per case. As an added bonus, female patients will have to sit there, with their asses exposed to the door (because the table always backs to the door) while waiting 2 hours for their doctor. Why are they waiting 2 hours for their doctor? Well, because we are going to start scheduling appointments in 10-minute increments. After all, it shouldn’t take long for them to do the full exam, especially because our patients shouldn’t be asking questions. They should take the birth control that we give them (whichever drug company pays us more that month), and be quiet. And if she wants some form of non-hormonal option like an IUD? Well, then we need to jack up that co-pay as high as possible, say $250 to discourage this. We need to do everything possible to encourage them to use archaic drugs- push that Ortho Tri-Cyclen!! If she has had a bad reaction to hormones? So what! Take them anyways! And if she starts asking about something for mood swings? Paxil or Prozac. So what if she would prefer something in another drug family, like Wellbutrin. We don’t care what she wants.” I could go on and on and on. I think you get the point.

It’s just a damn good thing my gyno was a pretty good-looking guy in his 30’s, instead of the old Pakistani man that I got last time.