matters

Dear HillBuzz,

In a previous letter to you I talked about the ordeal I went through getting my ex-partner David’s hospital bills paid by his company’s insurance company after he was injured on the job a few years ago.  I offered this personal anecdote as an example of how to fight back at Corporate America when it’s in the wrong, but think it’s important to tell you and your readers more of the story to illustrate how important persistence is in dealing with large corporations that require time and relentless commitment before your message finally sinks in. 

This is all, of course, pursuant to the ongoing boycott of David Letterman’s sponsors in relation to the jokes he made on June 8th and June 9th about the hypothetical statutory rape of 14 year-old Willow Palin by 33 year-old Alex Rodriguez during the seventh inning stretch of the Yankees game the minor child Palin daughter attended with her mother, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. Today, we learned that The Olive Garden, Hellmann’s Mayo, and Embassay Suites are the first three advertisers to pull their support for David Letterman and his brutalization of young women in such sexist, misogynistic, and vulgar terms.  Letterman offered up a weak “apology” riddled with excuses and justifications for his odious behavior (which in my book doesn’t amount to an apology at all — the way David’s mother, Louella, my ex-mother-in-law, used to apologize for the various terrible things she routinely did to me by saying, “Well, I’m sorry if you found that offensive, BUT…”). The moonbats, Obots, and trolls then came out in full force chanting, “it’s over!  He said he’s sorry!  Move on!” just when the tide’s turning and both Corporate America and Letterman’s handlers realize they’ve got a big problem on their hands. 

The same thing happened to me in the three month letter-writing war I waged against what I’ll call the Mutual Benefit Insurance Company and David’s employer at the time, a retail giant I’ll call Boxco:  just when we started to make some traction and get concessions out of Mutual Benefit and Boxco, Louella started telling David we should just give up, because we were never going to win, and were spending so much money on postage.  ”Besides,” Louella concern-trolled to David, “Mutual Benefit offered to pay 25% of the bills, and that’s better than nothing.”  I reminded Louella that paying 100% of the bills was better than settling for 25%, and Louella scoffed, “Well, if YOU can get THEM to pay 100% of David’s bills then I’m a monkey’s uncle.”  

More like a cankerous and stinky baboon’s butt, in my opinion, but you see what I had to deal with for three years while living with David and being part of a relationship that including not just he and I, but also a very opinionated, perpetually wrong septugenarian long distance back in Richmond Heights, Ohio. 

David’s hospital bills were $15,000, after having a seizure while at work operating some computer equipment, then cracking his head open on a work station as he fell to the floor and was knocked unconcious.  His supervisor made the decision to call 911 before David regained consciousness, and he was in the emergency room at Northwestern Memorial Hospital (the most expensive in downtown Chicago, while other more affordable options were available) before he ever came to.  From there, he was whisked through a dozen different MRIs and CAT-scans, racking up a bill in the thousands.  The doctors decided, after a few hours, that those initial scans were all inconclusive, so they scheduled him for another round of scanning over the next two days, requiring him to rack up the majority of his hospital bill in what amounts to one of the world’s most expensive hotels.  

David’s work called me, as I was his emergency contact person, and mercifully Northwestern gave me no trouble for being David’s male partner:  I was allowed to see him, consult with his doctors, and make decisions about his care the same way I would have if we were a heterosexual couple instead of two gay men.  David’s mother meddled in all of this from afar, the same way she would have, undoubtedly, if we were a heterosexual couple as well (and instead of being the unctious cartoon Louella, she was Pearl Slaghoople, or some equally cartoonish derivation thereof). Louella was 80% of the reason David stayed in the hospital as long as he did, while both he and I decided he was fine to go home (and that the hospital was just trying to rack up a bigger bill).  David listened to Louella, however, and thus began the $15,000 battle. 

And let me tell you, the hospital wasted no time in billing David.  His injury happened on a Monday, and he was in the hospital until 330pm on Wednesday (we later found out that if he had been released at 259pm he would have only been billed for half a day on Wednesday, instead of the whole day that he was charged…which I’m SURE was just a coincidence). By Friday, we had the first of the many bills that arrived, with each doctor and specialist billing David separately.  

Being a project manager, I just handled the process the way I would a landscape or construction project I worked on:  treating each doctor as a subcontractor and bundling all their invoices into a binder as I began prep to fight this case. Also in project management mode, I spent hours at the library researching governing statutes and used a friend’s LexisNexis login to bone up on governing statutes and relevent precedents covering worker’s compensation and employees being seriously injured on the job, through no fault of their own, while operating work machinary in the course of their normal job duties.  

I found at least three cases where various workers had seizures while operating work machines and somehow injured themselves, resulting in trips to the hospital after employer’s called ambulances.  Just like David’s case.  In all these instances, including one that happened at a bakery and another in an office where the machine in question was a computer, the employee’s medical bills were 100% covered by worker’s comp — just as David’s should have been.  

Because, not being able to afford insurance at the time (and not being covered by my insurance in Illinois because this state does not require employers to treat two male partners like two heterosexual spouses), if given a choice, David would have either gone to the cheapest hospital he could find or would have gone to an Urgi-care center or Minute Clinic to get another opinion before committing to spending thousands of dollars on tests that ended up all being “inconclusive” (which, to me, still suggests the hospital believed all along those tests were doing nothing more than helping to pay for the new 128-bit GE CT-scanner that cost Northwestern a bundle). 

The insurance company started denying David’s claim as soon as the bills started coming, and the very day a denial of payment would come in I’d use everything I researched to hit back, refuting everything the insurance company said.  I quoted directly from both case law and federal/state statutes to show Mutual Benefit and Boxco why, precisely, they were wrong in denying this claim — further pointing out that under federal law both companies could make themselves open to civil suit on our part for willfully, capriciously, and arbitrarily denying a valid worker’s compensation claim and, thus, adding more needless stress to an injured worker.  

Essentially, that law’s in there to prevent behemoths like Mutual Benefit from denying, denying, denying claims until an injured worker is bankrupt, homeless, or dead and the insurance company never has to pay out on its claim.  If a claim is deemed valid by the worker’s compensation board — which David’s was, in all three hearings that were held — and a company just keeps denying it without substantive reason, the penalties were something like thousands of dollars for each act of capricious denial. 

And there I was, keeping track of all those instances, writing a letter a day right up the bureaucratic chains at Mutual Benefit and Boxco.  First, I wrote to just David’s claim supervisor, Maryann…and after I realized the game she was playing, I figured out who her supervisor was, and who that person’s regional manager was.  Every letter I wrote I copied to two people above the person i was writing to — so that not only would the recipient realize I meant business, but she or he would wonder what those in the regional office were saying about what was going on in that department.  

I just kept writing and writing and writing, with another letter of denial coming every day.  

And every time I wrote, I included copies of all the letters I wrote beforehand as well.   

Our living room became an assembly line for these letters.  I had stacks and stacks of paper, all piled neatly, always ready to go.  When I’d finish a new letter, I’d print out 30 copies, then work the assembly line to include copies of all the paperwork before it, with CC: to the entire C-suite at both Mutual Benefit and Boxco.  

Then, I moved onto the Boards of Directors of both companies…and then I started CC-ing the local media in all the cities where these companies had offices.  Of course, I was also copying the state and federal worker’s comp and labor department officials on all of this too. 

Towards the end of the three months it took to get all of David’s medical bills paid, I had two pages of CC-ed people on each letter. I think the last batch of letters we sent out had 50 people copied on it.  

Now, not everyone got every letter even if they were copied on it — that’s a little trick I pulled on Mutual Benefit.  I would ALWAYS copy certain important people, like David’s claims supervisor and the CEOs of the companies, but then I’d pick 5 out of all the people I CC-ed to send actual packets to.  Since I was mailing packets every day, I’d typically hit everyone on the list with at least one packet, so if they were in communication with one another, someone was always receiving SOMETHING.  I just made it look like they were all getting every packet.  

Just to make these people realize that the letter writing was never going to stop unless they did what they were supposed to do and paid David’s medical bills in full. 

I also kept track of what I spent on the printing and postage of all the correspondence to convince them to do what they were supposed to do anyway, because as I understood the law if these people willfully, capriciously, and arbitrarily denied David’s claims and forced us to spend so much out of our own pocket to get them to do what they were supposed to do anyway, they should reimburse us.  

Despite Louella every day saying I needed to just give up and accept the 25%, then 50%, then 75% that Mutual Benefit offered to pay of the medical bills, I held out for 100% payment (and ultimately received that, with a $1,000 settlement to cover our costs incurred in the investigation and resolution of this claim). 

Louella wanted us to give up at 25% and kept telling David it was hopeless. 

I knew we weren’t done yet, and that we had to be persistent. 

Louella wanted us to give up at 50% and kept telling David I just needed to shut up. 

I knew we weren’t done yet, and that it takes weeks before Corporate America takes anyone seriously. 

Louella wanted us to give up at 75% and kept telling David that “Mutual Benefit is sorry, just tell him to move on to something else, that obsessive little French f***” (which is what she often called me). 

I knew if we just kept up the assembly line that Mutual Benefit and Boxco would soon do whatever it took to stop the letters from coming.  

And I was right.  

So, I tell you this to remind everyone that David Letterman’s advertisers will indeed desert him, but the pressure must be kept on them to do so.  It’s been about 9 days since Letterman made his vulgar “joke” about the statutory rape of Willow Palin by Alex Rodriguez.  In just 9 days three major sponsors have abandoned Letterman.  

Just imagine what his sponsorship deals will look like after 18 days…27 days…a full 30 days. 

Maybe you can convince Mars Candy, Kelloggs, and Johnson + Johnson to drop him like Olive Garden, Hellmann’s, and Embassy Suites did.  

I bet at least one of those will dump Letterman before 30 days is out.  

But, the real victory will never fully be known because no matter how many sponsors actually drop Letterman publicly, the ad execs will surely use 30 days’s worth of boycott letters to negotiate much-reduced ad rates from CBS in the future.  So you could be hurting Letterman in ways you will never understand, just by standing up against this leftist political activist and showing Madison Avenue and the CBS execs that he can’t get away with this misogyny anymore. 

So, I remind you that nothing good has ever come from listening to trolls and Louellas.  They either don’t know what they are talking about, or they want you to fail, for whatever reason.  They also smell bad, have horrific teeth, and are twice-divorced publicly shamed adulteresses who live in glass houses and throw a lot of stones (at least in the case of my Slaghoople former mother-in-law, anyway).  

Keep the pressure up, and see for yourself that determination and perseverence pay off big time in the end. 

 

Sebastian Gray, 

Chicago Illinois