American Ninja Warrior Health Insurance
You’re on a platform at the start of a ridiculous obstacle course with balance beams to cross, walls to climb, and rings to grab with one hand. In the dream, you’re a young white man with a good job and health insurance; then you realize the obstacle course is your health insurance.
You wouldn’t bother with the obstacles except your penis hurts when you urinate.
The first balance beam is easy to cross but you’re stopped by your doctor’s receptionist because you don’t have an insurance card. You explain that you just started a new job, so you call the office and the HR rep explains there’s a six-month delay before insurance starts. The doctor won’t see you without insurance, even though you offer to pay cash, and you fall off the balance beam into the cold water below.
As you walk off the course, your friends and family in the bleachers call to you, but the pressure in your bladder sends you looking for a porta potty where no one will hear you scream because your penis still hurts when you urinate.
Wipeout Medical Arts Professional Building
You’re standing on a carpet of artificial turf in a remote field littered with cartoon-like obstacles and you realize you’re supposed to go through each silly hazard to see a doctor about the lump in your left breast.
First you have to climb a hill made of smooth plastic and covered with oil to get an appointment. Next, the doctor’s office is on the other side of a ledge above a trough of mud; as you move along the ledge, boxing gloves spring out from the wall, knocking you down into the mud. Finally, you have to jump onto rubber balls suspended thirty feet above a shallow pool of ice water to get to where a radiologist waits with your x-rays.
You make it to the radiologist, but the time has almost expired, so he only says, “Yeah, there’s something there so you’d better talk to a surgeon,” and he sends you back to the oil-covered hill to make an appointment.
America’s Got Talent Pharmaceutical Cost Containment
You’re on a stage in a theatre packed with people. Four judges sit on a platform in front of the stage, waiting to hear you sing, but you don’t know the words to the song. You don’t even know the song. All you know is that you have a rare genetic disorder and need medicine to cure it.
The judges are a motley crew: a white guy who hates everything, a Latina who loves everything, a fashion model who seems lost, and a bald guy who thinks he’s funny. “Well?” the white guy asks.
The medicine to cure your disease costs $2.5 million; you realize these four judges are the pharmaceutical cost containment company who will decide if you deserve to live. You have to literally sing for your life, but you still don’t know the song.
Waiting in the wings is a pack of acrobatic, knife-throwing, tight-rope-walking dogs. No matter what you do, the judges will forget about you the moment the mutts take the stage, just like the insurance company will forget about you once you’re dead.
Final Jeopardy!
You’re on Jeopardy! and getting slaughtered by a pain in the ass who is quicker on the clicker than a rabbit on a date. Your brain is still foggy from COVID and you’re distracted because your health insurance refuses to pay for the hospital treatment, insisting it was billed wrong.
The pain in the ass knows all the trivia in the world, but you catch a break with categories of “In-tub-ation” (responses will include “tub”), “Going Viral” (recently infected celebrities), and “French Cinema” (you’re a fan).
You’re still in it at Final Jeopardy! and the ghost of Alex Trebek announces the category: “Medical Billing.”
To win, you have to guess the correct diagnosis and procedure codes during your three weeks in the hospital. But as that Jeopardy! song plays, the fucking hospital places a lien on your home in anticipation of non-payment, and the bank has called your mortgage.
Even if you guess the correct codes, you’ll spend money you don’t have on a lawyer to keep your house. Hopeless, you answer: “I’m fucked.”
“Sorry,” the ghost of Alex Trebek says. “But the correct response is: ‘What is I’m fucked?’”
