Look, if You Don’t Want to Get Ripped Off, Stop Buying Things
Friday, February 15th, 2008
Caveat Emptor used to mean that if those rancid meat pies you bought at the equinox fair gave you dysentery and you died, it was your own damned fault for being a peasant during the Middle Ages. And it’s good to know corporations like Microsoft and Blue Cross Insurance are keeping that sentiment alive.
“Windows Vista capable PCs are junk.”
“I now have a $2,100 e-mail machine.”
“Even a piece of junk will qualify.”
Reasonable assessments of the bait-and-switch scheme Microsoft developed to boost their holiday sales: putting a “Windows Vista capable” sticker on low-end PCs and selling them to hapless technophobes.
The mildly surprising part is, those quotes aren’t from reviewers, but from top Microsoft executives discussing their shitty computers (many of which could only run very limited versions of Vista anyway) via internal emails.
This is an OS so crappy, “Windows Vista capable” has taken on an insulting quality, like telling someone they’re capable of wandering around with their pants around their ankles muttering to themselves and falling into piles of boxes. And some of these machines could barely do that.
The only thing that makes me not want to bring vigilante street justice down upon their heads is the fact that while they were wringing their hands and admitting “we really botched this,” Blue Cross was trying their damnedest to take coverage away from anyone who might need it at the moment and feeling no remorse whatsoever.
Blue Cross, it seems, has for years made it routine policy to send out letters to doctors with copies of a new patient’s application and the instruction to report “any condition not listed on the report that turns out to be pre-existing.” Which doesn’t sound quite as seedy as the literal translation “so hey, how can we fuck this guy?”
Because of course the reporting of even the most minor unreported condition (an unreported pregnancy qualifies, even if the patient wasn’t aware they were pregnant at the time they filled out the form) gave Blue Cross the legal grounds to wait until the person got deathly ill and then deny their coverage requests.
And getting doctors to rat on patients is a hell of a lot cheaper than taking the time to verify information, that’s for damn sure. Which is basically their defense, that they were “trying to keep costs at a minimum.” Which is like a guy who runs a drugstore replacing all the pills with tic-tacs to save on overhead.
Caveat Emptor!
The only thing that cheers me up is the fact that I now know the name of the president of the California Medical Association, and it’s Dick Frankenstein.
When not blogging for Cracked, Michael makes consumer awareness videos as head writer and co-founder of Those Aren’t Muskets!
