NYU/Winthrop is billing me $1200.00 for talking to a nurse practioner and five minutes in a BS session with a surgeon as a "consultation". I got on them as a fully-covered VA referral. They informed me they "would look into it" while I have in my possession documentation that informs me that the U.S. will cover my "outside care" as a VA referral.

Meantime, NYU/Winthrop radiology mailed me forms to fill out so that they could send my CT scan images from February 7th out to my oncologists at the VA Hospital in Northport. I had to go through rounds of "telephone tag" to get that stuff mailed to me. It was like filling out multiple forms for a mortgage with bad credit.

I am upright and feeling well as an old fart. The scans show me to be without cancer from throat to groin. I'm going to have some lung cut out for some piece of mind and a great shot for a complete cure and I have time. I want to get away from the immunotherapy every three weeks with the catheter in my arm and the endless blood labs.

The laughs come from the idiot medical bureaucracies I have to deal with since I am relatively well.

The horrors come from thinking about a veteran or anybody who might be flat on his back with cancer or another disease and having to deal with piles of paperwork and office screwups before receiving needed care.

I'll get by this medical bureaucratic clusterfuck but Lord help us if Medicare for all gets here when nobody but office pinkies get to call your medical care coverage.

I was playing telephone tag on Friday. I got a VA authorization number and now NYU/Winthrop tells me the billing should stop.

I doubt it but it's a start but now I have a case number.

The bills have stopped but my Feb. 7th CT scan results from NYU/Winthrp never made it to my VA oncologists. I need those good people who have been treating my lung cancer well for two years to sign off on my surgery before I have my chest cut open. At the moment my scans show me to be cancer-free.

I'm game for a 100% cancer cure with surgery but the bureaucratic bullshit red tape and paperwork is mind-boggling. I have completed the paper work necessary to negate "patient confidentiality" between the behemoth NYU/Winthrop and the Veterans Administration.

I am entitled via my Marine Corps service to be in private care now at the recommendation and authorization of the VA at no cost to me but here I sit with my thumbs in my ass while my needed surgery is off in limbo while paper shufflers poop sideways on the pot. I'm supposed to be home now drinking beer and recovering from surgery instead of drinking beer with no scars on my chest.

Do not ever think about "Medicare & Medicaid" for all. You'll bleed to death in the ER while multiple assholes and government people shuffle through your paperwork.

Gov't is....shaky...bureaucracy strangling all...before Covid-19 on scene