I
got an automated call on June 29, instructing me to stay on the line for
important information about my health benefits. I was tempted to hang up, but, since I was the health
benefits coordinator at work, I thought I should listen in case there were
something I might need to pass on to our employees…either information or a
warning. When a woman came on the
line, she said her name was Empira, and that she worked for Magellan Health Services,
and did I know what services Magellan provided? Actually, I am one of very few people in our school system
who does know that Magellan handles the mental health care portion of our
medical benefits, and I told her so. She said that was correct, and she started
to list the various services they offered (Behavioral Counseling, blah, blah,
blah…). My head was flipping
through my mental Rolodex, trying to think of some need I might have for the
services of mental health professionals. Empira??? Not even in The Twilight Saga had I come across that name.
I
interrupted her to ask why she was specifically calling me.
She told me that she was told I had made some prescription claims and
asked me if either my husband or I were taking any prescription drugs. I said we were. Then she asked me if we were taking any
psychotropic drugs, evading my question.
By this time, I was getting pretty miffed, and I asked her again why she
was calling me,
specifically. She tried again to
ask me what I was taking, and I told her we took lots of prescription drugs,
but none of them are psychotropic, and I demanded to know why she was calling
me.
In
a way, I felt sorry for her, since privacy concerns prevented my health plan
from telling Empira why exactly she was calling me...or what specific services
she should offer me. All she knew
was that some prescription I had filled initiated the call.
I
told her I thought the call was creepy and that I would not answer her
questions about my prescriptions…or my husband’s. For Horizon to tell her to call me to try to find out why she was calling me, was, well,
creepy. She replied that a generic
letter would be going out to me in a few days.
After
I hung up, I realized the cancer drugs I was taking probably instigated the
call, and they might have thought I was depressed. When the letter arrived, it had a case number on it, and it
was offering me some sort of behavioral services, if I requested them. Nowhere was there a name or address of
anyone I could write to tell them how creepy I thought they were. When I showed the letter to my boss,
Kevin, he theorized that Magellan got the contract from Horizon to provide
cancer management services.
Oh.
If
I get any more of those calls, however, I might well need the services of a
mental health professional! And perhaps that person might have a name more like, say, Brenda or Margaret.
