A “Brilliantly Stupid" Health Care Cost

Here’s a guaranteed way of saving almost real money on health care costs.  If a provider, such as a lab, winds up owing a patient under two cents, it should refrain from sending him a check for that amount, because if I had to guess, the stamp alone costs at least that much.

Without naming the specific lab as I don’t want folks there steamed the next time they evaluate my precious bodily fluids, but policymakers and regulators need to know that one of them sent me a check the other day for a penny, literally.  On top of that, while the check had my first name right, it identified me by my wife’s last name, meaning it would be bureaucratically treacherous to cash it even if I wanted to.  (I once got a check for Mitch “Silverstein”; trust me, it was a long afternoon.)  But no matter how the lab identified me, I immediately decided to frame it and stick it on a wall, as I’ve never received anything so brilliantly stupid.

Do I recognize that I will spend loads more than a penny getting the check framed, especially if I get it matted and done up right?  Sure, but we do crazy things for art all the time.  More importantly, though, I recognize that my extravagance will not contribute even a half-a-cent to the nation’s paralyzing health care bill while the lab’s ridiculousness, on the other hand, already has.  If anything, commemorating this great moment in American health care may well result in Minnesota receiving a couple of extra bucks in sales taxes, thus getting our state that much closer to balancing its biennial books.  I feel like a better citizen already. 

P.S.  I should note here a check for 35 cents I didn’t receive recently.  This is the time of year in which publishers send out royalty checks.  Meaning, it’s the time of year when I find out how much I’ve earned, along with two coeditors, for a book we did on the fatherhood movement in 1998.  The combined take this year (much like last year) totaled $1.05, or 35 cents each.  The publisher, I gather, was legally obliged to send us letters to this effect, but it has a sensible policy of not actually cutting more costly checks until sums get a bit bigger.  I would sacrificially urge my lab to consider doing the same.