Some pictures of pillion pegs on a 1996 XT600.

1996 XT600 LH pillion peg - closeup

1996 XT600 LH pillion peg - closeup

1996 XT600 LH pillion peg

1996 XT600 LH pillion peg

I would like to propose a new unit of measure – the Geezerbyte.

The Geezerbyte is a measure of the technical ineptitude, typically of older populations, although this could apply equally to any age group.

For example, someone saying “My new laptop has 2.8 gigabytes of hard disk” would rate 2.4 Geezerbytes, whereas someone saying “My new laptop has 15 inches of DDS RAM and a 320 giggabytes CPU” would rate 17.2 Geezerbytes.

I’ve noticed recently that my health insurance company’s privacy policy has changed so that when they call you, they need to check personal details to verify your identity before discussing your account. Sounds like a good idea – make sure they always verify your details, so they don’t give out personal details which might lead to identity theft.

But hang on, they call you, and ask you to give them your name, date of birth, address, phone number, policy details? Sounds like a great identity theft scam to me.

Now, I do actually know that the times i have been called by my health insurance company it actually has been them. But really, if i wanted to scam some identities surely it wouldn’t be hard to pick a common company (whether health insurance or some other service provider), blindly ring numbers (without sending your caller id) and pretend to be checking some account details.

The other side to this is that, often when they do ring, I’m out at in a public space. A public place is not somewhere i’d like to recite my personally identifying details for anyone to hear, just like i won’t use an submit personal info over an unencrypted link, especially not when using a free public wifi access point.

It is reassuring that companies are taking identity theft more seriously, but blindly implementing measures without thinking them through? Seems like security theatre is expanding it’s audience.

A few notes on my recent experiences with Australian Unity Health Insurance – I could never recommend them after all the shit I’ve been through with them. So, here’s the story:

In September last year I was involved in a motor vehicle accident. The details aren’t relevant, except that I received multiple injuries, one of which required immediate hospitalisation and surgery. No worries, I thought, I’ve got private health insurance. Off to a private hospital with a good surgeon to get fixed up. Paid my excess and thought little more of it. As is often the case, I received a letter a few weeks after discharge asking me details of the accident. I gave them, and provided them with my lawyer’s contact details. Nothing more till about three months later, when I was preparing to go in for a second lot of surgery related to the accident.

On pre-admission talks with a lady from the hospital, she checked my excess and it turned out I had to pay one. This was a bit funny, seems as I’d paid one in September, and I’m not supposed to have to pay more than one excess a year. I mentioned that the surgery was related to a motor vehicle accident.

Suddenly her tone changed and I felt as though I’d turned into a leper with bad debts and no health insurance.

I was told that Australian Unity refuses to pay the hospital if it is a motor vehicle accident. Full stop. The hospital policy was that in these cases, they required full upfront payment of estimated hospital costs on admission, no exceptions. Apparently no other insurance company does this except Australian Unity.

So, with Australian Unity, if you have a motor vehicle accident, you effectively have no health insurance. At the time you need it most. This must be what it’s like to live in America.

It turns out that, about a month after I’d returned their questionairre after the first hospital stay, they sent my lawyer a letter. A letter, which when read by any reasonable person, would be interpreted as saying “we notice that this bill is related to a motor vehicle accident. if you receive any compensation, we expect that you’ll pay us back”. It turns out, however, after many heated discussions and explanations, that what it actually said was “we notice that this bill is related to a motor vehicle accident. We aren’t going to pay, so you sort out the bill, and if they refuse to pay, then provide us written evidence and we might process it”. Bear in mind that, the way it was written, this conclusion could only be reached after many careful re-reads by my lawyer, after someone from australian unity had summarised the meaning for him.

Right about the same time I was being told by the second hospital I’d have to pony up their estimate of $8000 on admission (this was a Friday, I was being admitted Monday morning) or else not get the surgery, I received a phone call from the first hospital. They were asking why it was I hadn’t paid the $14500 bill from my first stay in September, which was now very overdue. Not happy.

So, in the space of a day, I found out that I’d have to pay $8000 on admission to get my surgery done, and that I owed $14500 for my first hospital stay, which was overdue and ready to be sold to debt collectors.

If not for the pain, I would have laughed at Australian Unity’s hold music which extolled the benefits of being with Australian Unity Health, how you could skip the public health system and have private surgeons, when where and who you wanted, with no waiting or fuss.

I was at absolute breaking point at that stage. Thankfully, my lawyer stepped in and told me he would take care of it. And that he did! Sounded like an absolute shitfight, but he managed to sort out the first hospital bill and avoid me having a $14.5k debt sold off. Since I was admitted first thing Monday morning there was nothing he could do about the pre-payment of fees, but luckily we had the credit capacity to handle this. It did get sorted in the end, but god knows how much it cost me (it took him a couple of days to sort, and he charges $400 and hour…)

What just makes this whole episode so fucked up is that there is just no reason for Australian Unity to have been so difficult. They have a process whereby you sign an irrevocable indemnity, where basically you say that if you receive any compensation, then you’ll pay them first. It’s no big deal, and very standard in any sort of insurance. Think of your car insurance – if you have a crash and make a claim, they don’t tell you that they think someone else might be liable, so ask them for money first and come back if you don’t have any luck. You pay your excess, they sort it, then they chase after the other guy if they think he was at fault. Apparently every other health insurance company works this way too. Australian Unity, once an irrevocable indemnity is signed, works this way too, but it was an absolute shitfight to get them to give us one to sign. Add this to all the bumbling and ineptitude around regular claims, and I’ve just had so much trouble dealing with them.

Ultimately, health insurance is one of those things that “is there for when you need it most”, but with Australian Unity, it isn’t.

If you’re in a motor vehicle accident and wish to obtain a copy of the Queensland Police investigation documents (for example, if you are fucked over by the police) there seem to be two ways to go about getting a copy:

• CITEC Confirm
• The Queensland Government’s Right to Information site

If you speak to police officers, it seems that the official method for access to your report is via CITEC. This costs (as at 2010-01-20) $70.70, and only actually provides you with a copy of the textual body of the report. Any attached documents, photos, scanned notes, drawings, or even statements which have been attached, rather than included are not part of the CITEC report, nor or they held by CITEC at all. The “Other Documents” mentioned in the CITEC Confirm application won’t get you these either – apparently it is for things like blood alcohol reading documents and other such things. As mentioned before, the police don’t actually transfer anything but the textual document to CITEC.

The other way, which I found out after I’d gotten a CITEC report and wondered where the hell all the information was, is to request a copy of all documents via the Queensland Government’s Right To Information (RTI) Act. This is a recent replacement of the Freedom of Information Act, and seems to work in a similar manner. A RTI request costs (as at 2010-01-20) $38 (unless the documents only contain personal information about you – probably not the case if it is a motor vehicle accident), and you can request copies of all relevant documents, not just textual information which is sent to CITEC.

I’m still waiting on my RTI request, but at this point I would say don’t even bother with a CITEC confirm report and go straight to a RTI request. It is much cheaper, and the CITEC confirm report is woefully inadequate in this sort of case.