We're still dealing with the bureaucratic fallout from Grandma's death in January. One consequence is that we receive impenetrable, inexplicable documents from Medicare every few days.
Here's an opaque paragraph from the latest missive. Try to judge at what level -- your choices are sixth grade through twelfth grade remedial -- this entirely irrelevant and gratuitous advice is written.
"Medicare may pay for services that you get while on board a ship within the territorial waters of the United States. In rare cases, Medicare may pay for inpatient hospital, doctor, or ambulance services you get if you are traveling through the territorial waters of Canada without unreasonable delay by the mos (sic) direct route between Alaska and another state when a medical emergency occurs and the Canadian hospital is closer than the nearest American hospital that can treat the emergency. Medicare won't pay for this service since you didn't meet these requirements."
It's the transition between the that long snake of a penultimate sentence and the final injunctive sentence that throws me. I made no request, so why the prohibition: "you didn't meet these requirements?" I never claimed to meet them; in fact, I've never (nor did Grandma) traveled from Alaska to the lower forty-eight by waterway. What the heck is Medicare talking about? Yikes! Double yikes!
And what's with the idiom "get services." Isn't it "receive services?" Or better yet, "receive care?"
There is no word more overused in American English than "get, got, gotten." Can we agree to ban all forms of the word "get" from our vocabulary for a year. Get it out of our collective systems. Except, of course, in classic exchanges such as, "Get it?" "Got it." "Good."
Is it possible that there are insurance-company moles in the Medicare system? They've infiltrated the bureaucracy and they cleverly undermine the drive for socialized medicine by generating cascades of dark, bilious, fearful prose.
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