Why PAs should have health insurance… or how Blue Shield of California can suck a dick

So. Because being a PA is freelance, you have to get your own health insurance seperately from any production company you work for. But last April, mine, (Blue Shield of California) decided to drop me because my credit card was close to the limit and a payment didn’t go through. As opposed to calling/emailing/sending me a letter about this, they did nothing, just quietly took me off their list. I have automatic payment on my card, so I never really look at the transactions unless they’re way off what I expect them to be. So I didn’t notice that I wasn’t getting charged until a few weeks ago when I got a bill for a few hundred dollars from a doctor’s visit. I called in a frenzy, we figured out the problem and I had to reapply and also submit an appeal to have my insurance restarted. I just got a letter in the mail saying that my application for coverage was denied, so now I am fully dependent on the appeal going through.

I was just denied health insurance from Blue Shield of California for two reasons:

1. “unexplained fatigue”
2. “additional concern is depression”

Well you glorified telemarketing FUCKS, maybe if you got off your asses and worked a 14 hour day on your feet, then came home and spent time pursuing a dream career of writing and performing comedy every night, then you might be able to explain some of that fatigue… but that would involve having some kind of goal or ambition besides a midlife crisis when you’re 40 and realizing you didn’t have the balls or talent to go after something you were passionate about besides watching TV and getting fat. You’re the unimaginative, smug townie that married your highschool sweatheart and puts Cathy cartoon clippings from the Sunday paper in your cubicle to mask the fact that you don’t see sunlight from 9-5, 5 days a week… you are the fatted cows for the American Dreams of mediocrity and sloth. So I’m tired and overworked, and I told that to my old doctor, who decided that it was a concern that a 24 year old girl was pushing herself to be all she could be instead of giving up and getting 10 hours of sleep a night.

And I do have depression. Want to know why, asshole? My grandmother, the woman who was a second mother to me, who basically raised me and taught me everything that I value and am proud of in myself, died suddenly a little over a year and a half ago, right before I moved to California. I stayed home until after Christmas, but knew if I didn’t leave then, then I never would and I would regret it. But California is a cold, lonely place if you don’t have good friends to surround you when you need them, and being 3,000 miles away from a family torn apart by grief is hard for anyone. So I got a therapist to help me cope with it, and it’s one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. I grow as a person every day and am happier than I have been in a long time… but depression is still apparently written on my medical charts.

I don’t drink, never have. I don’t smoke, never will. I have never touched a drug a day in my life. I exercise every single day. I watch what I eat. I’m not overweight. I have not been sick in over a year. I am a good kid. I am extremely healthy. Yet you won’t give me health insurance? Why am I being punished for taking the road less travelled? Does something about me scare you, big corporation? I’m sorry I’m honest and in touch with my feelings and I don’t drown them out with $2 happy hours and reruns of American Idol.

Shame on you. Go fuck yourselves.

Shameless Self Promotion

Hey all!! This week I’m going to do some shameless self promotion. I’ve got a stand up show this Wednesday in Hollywood!! If you’re free, come check it out. Here’s the info:

12 comedians. 5 minutes each. And super super cheap alcohol. What more could a kid want?

Featuring the comedic stylings of:
Alisha Gaddis, Susan Coletti, Lane Moore, Andy Ostroff, Tilt, Meg Murphy, Dustin David, Emily Brochin, Rebecca Stevens, Brandie Posey, Jamie Brunton, Vanessa Ramos, Jeremy Evans, Kevin Garbee, Charles Ball

$10. See you there!

Date: Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Time: 8:00 - 10:00 PM

Location: The Next Stage: 1523 N. La Brea Hollywood, CA

I know a few of these comics and they’re awesome, funny people, so it should be a bunch of fun. My set will be me talking about: knife fights, emilio estevez, baby showers, scatting and Bob Saget. I promise to be funny, or at the very least bomb in an amusing fashion.

Come on out!

Hollywood: Once again proving the Right… right.

So.  Hollywood has finally become the godless heathens that we have for so long been considered by the conservative Right.   Behold, devil spawn: 

Read this article (and then come back, post haste, I’m more entertaining than the news, promise).

http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/science/08/05/clone.dog.ap/index.html

Earlier this month, a “screenwriter” decided, for $50,000.00,  to clone her dead dog because she missed him.  Really?  Is this what the Writer’s Strike was about, so we could spend our DVD residuals on cloning dogs?  Is that why I worked on shit reality TV for 6 months?  I see nothing on IMDB under her name…  by these standards, I’M a screenwriter.  So someone should give me $50,000.00 so I can blow it on building a Frankenweenie.

As someone with only a couple bucks to their name,  I am appalled.  You might argue that it’s the same as spending money on an expensive car, but I don’t think so…  cars aren’t living, breathing things that we made from the dead…  although they are fueled by dead dinosaurs, so maybe I should rethink that analogy.  Oh fuck it, this is a free blog.  Live with it.

If you want to honor your dead pet, then donate that money to a shelter, Lord knows they need it.  Or adopt another animal, hell, adopt 100 animals for $50,000.00!  There are so many dogs put to sleep every DAY in Los Angeles alone…  and here is someone deciding to clone 5 MORE!  Really?  At the very least, you’re disrespecting the wishes of the late host of The Price Is Right.  Bob Barker might not be dead, but he left the show…  and that makes him dead to ME…  my dreams of the perfect showcase showdown have been destroyed…  along with Booger the cloned dog’s dignity in death.

Good Lord.  People are idiots and don’t deserve anything they get.  I hope her clone dogs grow up soulless and bite her face off.  And you know they don’t have souls…  or at least they each have 1/5 of a soul.  She should have made 7 puppies, and they could be her Horcruxes, just like Lord Voldemort.  They’re both pretty evil in my book.

You know what makes me proud?  Dissing someone with a Harry Potter reference.

 

I’m telling you, the end of the world is near.  I really, REALLY hope this doesn’t become a trend.  Hollywood already remakes way too many movies…  can we agree to draw the line at remaking our pets?

Or at the very least, stay away from purple eyeshadow, k?