Insured - Or Maybe Not

What exactly is the point of home-contents insurance, if, when you make a claim, they do everything in their power to avoid paying out? I think the whole thing is what is generally known as a 'swizz'. As a friend said they start from basis that you are somehow trying to cheat them and the other innocent policy holders (I think that's called 'divide and conquer') and then they place so many obstacles in your path that you eventually say 'F*** this for a game of snakes and ladders' and withdraw your claim. Apparently, they even have voice analysis on their telephones and if you sound nervous or upset or anxious they use this as evidence that you are lying. Riiiiiight...and I'm not supposed to sound anxious and upset after going through a traumatic ordeal.

I put this to a rather rude guy on the other end of the 'phone when I rang to respond to yet another letter querying my claim. His response was: 'If I had a pound for every policy-holder who's said that to me.' I guess it's never occurred to him that people keep saying it because it's true. If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, then there's a good chance it may well be a duck.

The adviser I spoke to at the citizens' advice bureau had a rather different perspective: 'If I had a pound for every client who came in here experiencing problems with insurance companies who refuse to pay up I think I'd be a billionaire.'

I have an insurance policy with Lloyd's Bank (I purchased insurance from there because they are a bank I have had dealings with ever since I was a child. I opened an account with them when I was about six and got a welcome pack which included one of those 'black horse' money boxes) but it is underwritten by Royal and Sun Alliance, who seem to underwrite just about every other high-street bank's insurance policy so the consumer doesn't have that much choice.

I have fourteen days to answer their 'queries'. I see the Royal and Sun Alliance (an ultra powerful multinational company) as a steam-roller coming towards me but I have no intention of moving.

I didn't get the opportunity to speak to the woman who raised these queries but I hope she looks good enough to appear on Watchdog.

My Fatal Mistake (Continued)

Other worrying thoughts occurred to me. Is Dr. S. using the threat of withdrawing my meds as a weapon; as revenge for an insult to a colleague (or am I being absurdly paranoid - that wouldn't be a first.) As I have already said doctors can be fanatically loyal to one another. Insult one and you insult them all. Dr. H. (the psychiatrist from hell) once threatened to cut off one particular medication he had originally prescribed. And he didn't mean just taper them off, he'd meant that he intended to simply cut off the supply. This was an action intended, I suspect, to punish me for a)Crying in his office - the ultimate absurdity - a psychiatrist who is uncomfortable with emotions; b) Protesting about the way I was treated in hospital in the mid '90s; c) Objecting to the fact that his 'team' didn't seem to be taking my problems seriously. (Problems that they had exacerbated by locking me up, forcibly medicating me and failing to control over-sexed male patients. Once a male patient exposed himself to me in the Patients' Lounge. I reported it to a nurse, a female nurse, who shrugged and said: 'Well, he is ill' - more evidence of that 'blame the victim' mentality again. One would imagine that empathy would be a pre-requisite for a job in the 'caring professions' but apparently not.

I have female friends who have had similar experiences. A case for the re-introduction of single sex wards, methinks. Dr. H. believes that the harassment of a few women in his care is a price worth paying for gender integration. He refuses to acknowledge that any problems exist. He just sections his patients and then leaves them to their fate. His attitude is all the more appalling when one consider the high proportion of female psychiatric patients who have experienced childhood sexual abuse (including me). His threat to withdraw my medication symbolised a withdrawal of approval, a consequence of my having had the audacity to criticise a system to which he belongs.

And I am afraid Dr. S. may be doing the same thing.

Perhaps I should be all innocent and childlike and unquestioning (like a certain fellow female patient). Perhaps I should stop being 'so bloody awkward' (as a former friend put it). Maybe then they'd be willing to help me. But that means I'd have to stop being me and I'm afraid I'm not prepared to do that.

Visiting Doug

Later in the week I paid my usual visit to Doug. We discussed my foolish behaviour. ‘I will not die in the name of some false-Messiah.’ (Neat bit of melodrama for you there). Doug said he had passed Andy on the street and had given him a ‘murderous look’. And it was indeed murderous. I asked him to demonstrate it and I have to say I shall be having nightmares for weeks to come. Anyway, it was sufficient to make Andy turn and scurry away. What a coward.

Doug and I discussed life before the NHS was introduced. He talked about how the poor and dying had to pawn their belongings in order to obtain treatment. His face was mottled with fury when I told him about an ultra-Conservative friend of mine who believes it should be abolished. He remembered what happened when his own father was dying. His stepmother had to pawn many of their valuables and even then they couldn’t afford a doctor (who probably couldn’t have done much anyway) so they employed a nurse who, according to Doug, was ‘huge and red-faced’ and ‘as Irish as a Shamrock’. She did an excellent job of looking after his father though and eased him through his final days. She was very experienced – she had been a nurse out in India. Some very experienced nurses are just as competent, if not more so, than many doctors.

Doug said he found her ‘terrifying’ at first but soon grew to admire and respect her and they remained friends until she died.