OK, folks, do you want to know why I was rejected for insurance coverage?
Apparently, on my visit to my doctor last December I reported “excessive alcohol consumption.” What I did report was one drink every six months or so. But hey, whatever a person with a Russian – sounding last name says about alcohol, what everybody hears is “alcoholic”, right?
The funniest thing is that the idiot doctor who reported this also has a Russian – sounding last name. He must be a total alkie.
You’re obviously unfamiliar with established US medical protocals for dealing with Russophones.
The rules are pretty simple, multiply anything the Russian speaking patient says about alcohol by 10,000. If the Doctor has any Russian speaking background then it should be multiplied by 12,000 to account for the drinking the doctor and patient will do together.
So… when you say one drink every six months or so that gets reported as 3000 drinks a month (rounding up a little because you know….. Russian)
You should have said “Oh I’m completely allergic to alcohol and the last time I had a drink was 4000 years ago!” This information will undergo a complex set of calculations and it will be determined that you consume two and half drinks an hour or 60 drinks a day, which is within the acceptable limit for Russian speakers.
Hopefully this will be useful to you in the future.
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Yes, I’m thinking I should have said, “Alcohol? Is that the weird gentleman at the corner store? No, I’m not familiar with him.” But then this would come off as unduly evasive. There’s no winning this game, it seems.
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I guess that they took a sort of liver status test – which I personally know is more or less useless. Many years ago, I told the doctor that I was worried about my (now late) wife’s drinking. So they called her for tests – but they also took blood sample from me. Guess what? The results showed that I was an alcoholic, but not she!!!! I hadn’t had a drop for months, as I couldn’t keep a bottle in our home – she always found them. But she was drinking beer and wine all the time when she was awake. And it didn’t show?
Asking another doctor years later how come, he said that the liver test only tells that the liver is under stress – for any substance. In my case, the antidepressants, and anxiolytics like Diazepam/Benzodiazepine, and over the counter pain killers. Also, exposure to fumes of solvent or gasoline and so on. I am not sure about different kinds of food – or dieting – or fasting.
Maybe the tests are useful for patients under treatment – the doctor can see the if the figures go up or down. The tendency.
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A conservative literary critic and college professor
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