Keeping your cool can be hard...

Sometimes it is hard to calm down...

Well, expect the worst out of a Cigna Disability Insurance Company (here after CDIC ) employee and they sure won't disappoint you...


I am opening this entry with a fable from Aesop, a cautionary tale on the nature of people...the Wikipedia synopsis looks like this:

A scorpion asks a frog to carry him over a river. The frog is afraid of being stung during the trip, but the scorpion argues that if it stung the frog, the frog would sink and the scorpion would drown. The frog agrees and begins carrying the scorpion, but midway across the river the scorpion does indeed sting the frog, dooming them both. When asked why, the scorpion points out that this is its nature. The fable is used to illustrate the position that the natural behavior of some creatures is inevitable, no matter how they are treated. It is also used to illustrate that individuals are apt to behave in accordance with their true character in spite of the education they might have received throughout their lives and in spite of knowing fully well the right course of action.

As we have many fronts, so does the enemy. As described here they are working right from the CDIC playbook:

CDIC is an enemy with four things on its side:

1. Time: They can wait and stall literally forever while you are dying on the vine so to speak. They can and do have the will and ability to out-wait your ability to survive. If you think this is cold, look into disease research sometime but sadly this is a fact of life.  This is a terrible and powerful weapon.

So what does one have to do with the other on this otherwise fine Tuesday? I suppose you could say it comes down to knowing who your friends are. Most of the people we have dealt with have been reasonably hostile or deceptive (but never in any case helpful), they know who they are and that they are on the "team" from now on. These people you can't trust to say or do anything right, the scorpion of the Aesop fable above.

There are those in the enemy camp that you figure are just foot-soldiers that are little more than cannon fodder. These people are disposable to CDIC so what value is there in you focusing your attack on them? I mean, it is sad when neither side cares if you survive.

Having been in the trenches ourselves we know for some folks a job is essential to survive. For someone in this latter category to piss us off requires they either try to rise above their level of personal competence or they try to grow a brain and think that they are smarter than we are.

For the former, it is usually the Peter Principle in action. This is not unique to any single demographic or industry; we have all seen it. Wikipedia describes it like so:

The Peter Principle is a concept in management theory in which the selection of a candidate for a position is based on their performance in their current role rather than on their abilities relevant to the intended role. It is named after Laurence J. Peter who co-authored the humorous 1969 book The Peter Principle: Why Things Always Go Wrong with Raymond Hull. The authors suggest that people will tend to be promoted until they reach their "position of incompetence".

The tech team laughs and says to "never explain with malice what can be explained through incompetence." 

Words to live by. Unlike the enemy we are not out to hurt the catastrophically defective.

The latter however get a special place on the shit-list. These are folks who make the mistake of thinking they can outsmart us. They are so sure of it they will lie to your face but lies that are so lame neither side believes them as soon as they are out of her mouth. These are the most insulting of all; they are implying that they can say what they want because there is nothing you can do about it.  Not because they are right. Not because of some kind of documentation or policy rule. They think they can win because they think they are better at their job than you are as an adversary. Delusions of grandeur to be sure but it doesn't matter when you have to get past such rabble to deal with the people really involved in your claim.

Currently our only point of contact is an appeals specialist whom has apparently drawn the short straw and gets to deal with us. We will call her Lucille Littles with whom we got to speak to this morning:

Our hero, Lucille Littles as portrayed by the wonderful Lily Tomlin.

As they have been sitting on our money now for coming up on seven months, we are fighting the time game with them and they know it. We sent a fax to Lucille over the weekend indicating that Dick Puddle had sent us in her direction, we had enough evidence to blow this game they are playing out of the water and requested a conference call between her and the team to discuss status. When Monday came and went with no response, I called her today stating the same evidence and asking for status.

Up to this point Mrs. Littles had the chance to do the right or at least honest thing and she blew it. She immediately goes into the Cigna two-step:

1. The evidence says what it says but is overridden by other documents or policies with some vague references to whatever is going to help her the most. This is a very common tactic. They never come right out and answer anything; you have to track down every line of reasoning they use to disprove them. If they ever did actually say what they mean, you would be able to settle things on that very call and it would all be over with. 
2. The evidence doesn't matter because she claims to need some report that she cannot get from Social Security, a doctor report paid for by the government. The claim cannot be decided until that report comes in and that could take months. It is the classic Time-game they play so well. They don't need this report; we both know what it will say (brain-damage). It is simply a delaying tactic and in this case she knows the situation so it is indeed with malicious intent. They made one crappy decision based on the facts at hand, they can make a right decision the same way. 

Now sometimes we still will not go after someone like this; sometimes the target is just too easy to make the pound of flesh tender enough.  You think that no matter how much they try to exceed themselves, they are simply not worth spending energy on. Then one pulls crap like this, for some insane reason thinking she has anything resembling an upper hand. Our investigations team have owned her butt all the way back to high school...shakes head in disbelief.

Lucille,  you are not that smart but worse, you are just not that careful. Your own company opened the door for this and your treatment of this claim has now made our pain your very own. Let it roll around in the mouth and savor the taste. Now get used to it for the next 12 years. We tried so hard to like you and gave you every chance to be human.

Except this time. Yes she tried to be more than she is and it would be far too easy to make her personal and professional life hell for the next decade.  It would not even be hard, would not cost a cent and would definitely make her feel our pain.


For someone with nothing left to lose, there is no down-side...except that we know we only have so much time and if we wasted time fooling around with Lucille, the real architects of our misery could escape.

Just kidding, we got them by curlies too. Fun for the whole family as they say.

Lucille gets probation for now. If she does something stupid before this gets resolved, well its the Darwin Principle in action...

Update: New day. Lucille got stupid on us or more to the point, tried to treat us like we were stupid enough to believe her story this morning. Even after knowing that we did not believe her, she kept pounding on the table. Lucille, you wouldn't put up with that from your own kids, why on Earth would you think that we would tolerate it from you?

No probation for you. We own you now. We are just moving up to her manager Lisa. More on the adventures of Lisa later today...

Conclusion:
Scorpions may be something everywhere else but out here in the desert, we just step on 'em. In the mean time, stop trying to grow a brain...

Until next time,

Mom Cobb
CignaWarJournal at Gmail dot com