Son Number One just turned twelve years old. I have a news
flash for you. Most eighteen-year-olds are idiots. What do those two things
have in common? Health care, obviously.
Eighteen-year-olds are, by definition, still teenagers, and
therefore some of the most irrational and irresponsible creatures on the
planet. Teenagers are worse than toddlers, actually, because their brains work
exactly the same, but teenagers have cars.
Why am I focusing on eighteen-year-olds? Because they
shouldn’t be in charge of anything. Whomever decided that eighteen was the age
to become an adult probably just couldn’t stand having the kid living in their
house any longer and wanted to be legally allowed to evict them.
Since twelve-year-olds are younger than eighteen-year-olds,
do you know who else shouldn’t be in charge of anything? Twelve-year-olds, that’s
who. Makes sense, right? Well, not to the government, I guess. Those braniacs
just put my twelve-year-old son in charge of his own health care decisions.
I was not expecting that to happen, because I am a rational
adult human, so it never even occurred to me that something as asinine as that
would even be possible until I tried to log into our health insurance website the
other day. Son Number One was missing from my list of family members on the
plan.
I just figured it was a website maintenance issue, since we
had just gotten home from his doctor’s visit. After further investigation I
found out that HIPAA decided that twelve was the perfect age for health care
independence.
HIPAA apparently stands for HighAndMighty Idiots Parenting AllOurKidsForUs Anonymously. Who comes up with these crazy acronyms, anyway? The
folks over at the government health care office have made it illegal for me to
have unfettered access to my own child’s medical records.
Hmm... Well, that seems really dumb. I know my sons’ doctor
had nothing to do with this, because he is a doctor, so he has an actual,
working brain. Unfortunately, it’s his office that gets to deal with the
aftermath of this HIPAA stupidity.
My twelve-year-old is now in charge of his own health care
decisions. OK, fine. One health care decision is whether or not to pay for your
health care. I’ll let you give him a call about billing for that office visit.
He doesn’t have a phone, or a credit card, or any money at all, or a clue, so
good luck. When you do get a hold of him somehow and ask him for money, he’s
going to talk to you about Star Wars, so be ready for that conversation to not
go your way. If you try to call me to get payment, I’m afraid I’ll be forced to
refer you to the rigid HIPAA guidelines. Sorry.
At our recent office visit, he got the first of his HPV
shots. It’s a two shot process, and he needs the next one in a year. Good luck
with scheduling that. Like I said, he doesn’t have a phone, but he does have a
gmail account for school, so I guess you could try sending him an email. But be
warned, if you include the word ‘papilllomavirus’ you’re going to lose him. He’ll
just assume it’s a language he doesn’t know and then he’ll go play kickball.
You could keep it simple and say ‘come to the doctor,’ but he
has no idea where your office is. Seriously, it could be a block from our house
and he still wouldn’t know. He knows where Blaze Pizza and Cold Stone Creamery
are, though. Maybe you could meet him at one of those places. I’m afraid I won’t
be able to drive him over to your office, because I don’t want to risk being
seen as coercing him into anything under the HIPAA guidelines. Your best bet
would be to actually send someone over to the middle school with the syringe and
corner him at lunch.
Since I’ll need to let him schedule his next appointment, if
you guys aren’t willing to track him down, you should see him back at the
doctor’s office when he’s about thirty-eight years old. He probably won’t be
going to a pediatrician any more by then, so you may have seen the last of him
thanks to HIPAA.
Also, I’m just perusing the six-page health care
instructional handout you mistakenly handed me during the office visit. I left
it for him to read, but it ended up wadded up with his gum stuck to it. I guess
he wasn’t all that interested in reading up on his most pressing twelve-year-old
health care issues. Perhaps that’s because he’s twelve. Tough to say.
Anyway, most of the immunizations and testing page was
illegible due to the Juicy Fruit, but I did notice there were sections on
nutrition, screen time, and sleep. Now that my twelve-year-old is in charge of
all this stuff, and since he apparently has no interest in reading your helpful
tips, you might want to come over and talk to him. He’ll be the one in a twelve-year-old
boy-shaped divot on the couch, catatonic in front of the TV, surviving on root
beer and pita chip crumbs from the cushions.
Maybe we could get the school nurse to give him some advice. That is, if he decides to go to school at all. Am I allowed to insist that he goes to school anymore, now that he’s all grown
up? I guess I should check the governmental regulations on that.
See you soon,
-Smidge
Copyright © 2016 Marc Schmatjen
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