Aetna are a bunch of Aesholes

Allow me to open by saying that Aetna SUCKS. Not the stub your toe or lock your keys in the car sort of sucks, but the kind of sucks that takes years of practice in the fields of incompetence and wrongdoing. The kind of sucks that turns the 2001 San Francisco 49ers (12-4) into the 2004 San Francisco 49ers (2-14), and causes the governor of Ohio to reach approval ratings so low, the people at Gallup thought them to be mathematically impossible.

I discovered one spring morning last year, to my surprise, that my four offending wisdom teeth are handled by two different factions of my beloved ex-insurance company. Courtesy of the all-orangutan policy-writing department at Aetna, my top set of third molars was a PPO issue, and the lower "impacted" (legalese for "bullshit excuse to require two separate policies") set an HMO issue. This means that in order for Aetna to cover the removal of my bottom wisdom teeth, I had to get a referral from my DOCTOR, not my DENTIST. I doubt I'm the only one here that might question why someone whose finger spends more time jabbing prostates than gumlines should be qualified to make this decision.

To compound the problem, I made the mistake of calling my doctor that same afternoon and asking the receptionist for the names and numbers of oral surgeons covered by Aetna HMO. AND, as any good receptionist knows, all words that start with "ORTHO" are the same, and she kindly provided me a totally useless list of orthoPEDIC surgeons, and not orthoDONTIC surgeons. I say "useless" because unless there is some new minimally-invasive procedure that surgically removes wisdom teeth via the foot, these people served little or no purpose in my quest. I of course had this confirmed by speaking with EACH AND EVERY ONE OF THEM.

Anyway, the upshot of all of this was that I took that Friday off to take care of the top half of my oral dilemma. It was to be an epic extravaganza of valium, percoset and baby food. Typical Friday, really, except I usually eat Wendy's.

And even today, a year later, my other two wisdom teeth perodically hammer away at my gums. I have ankle surgery scheduled for next month; hopefully that will take care of the problem.