Health Is Wealth. Insurance is neither

If you are part of the 80% + of India’s population that does not have health insurance (and are therefore a blot on the GDP landscape), here is what it is:
1. You pay
2. You fall ill
3. You claim
4. They reject
5. You plead
6. They reject
7. You beg
8. They reimburse cost of toothpaste used, up to 60 days before and 90 days after hospitalisation
9. You renew
10. You fall ill….and so on.

If you don’t claim anything, they give you thank-you-for-not-pestering-us-so-we-can-watch-the-world-cup bonus.
 In April, I applied, after considerable research on options, to Cigna TTK.  My sophisticated reasoning was that a company that makes pressure cookers headed by an Iyengar who did not follow Ramanuja to Melkote must be the best at health insurance.  

In a moment of utter asininity – induced by a neighbour who was smoking pot and talking to the moon – I applied online.  Once you are done, you will get about 43 calls, between which you are allowed daily duties. 

The calls begin as follows:
“Are you so-and-so?”
“No, I am his labrador retriever.” Actually I did not say that (not quick-witted enough), but strongly recommend that you do. 
“For the sake of verification, can you provide your date of birth?”

This is ridiculous.  They call me and ask me to identify myself, when telephone etiquette since Alexander Graham Bell has been the reverse.  When I said this, they asked me how I was related to AG Bell, which of course warrants not an answer, but an education.  

Next they need everything, and by that I mean anything.  Actually everything that is anything (or the other way around).  If there was a pimple on the dimple of your baby bottom, that is vital information.  And they always end with, “You have been speaking to Rajesh Khanna,” as if the said R Khanna is a neurosurgeon in disguise, adding to his income by toiling in a call centre.  

I fetched up for tests at a diagnostic clinic in Koramangala where the only technology in evidence, other than the syringe, was an ECG machine (honest, I mean this.  Ok, I also saw a desktop).  The ECG machine, judging by the stains, had been used in its free time to remove bits of intestines and to lay roads in Defence Colony (this is a joke by the way.  There are no roads in Defence Colony, only wide jungle trails.)

The young doc who examined me had both his eyes on the pretty nurse and his fingers on my pulse (the other way around would have caused him trouble on social media: “Doctor assaults nurse in presence of legendary writer”).  He asked me if I had something called a hernia and I smiled and said, No, I have always been a Honda buff and have a City.  He then stared at me, which was the only time he took his eyes away from the nurse, and shook his head questioningly and I shook mine in response; no doubt he was checking if the ball bearings around the skull base were well oiled.  
And when he told me that the heart was pumping along satisfactorily, I told him that his wasn’t at the moment.
(No, actually, I didn’t.  I am lying again).

And then he said that I was done.

I agreed with him on this.  

As I really was done, I cancelled the policy.