I switched health insurance carriers recently so had to select a new primary care physician.  My new doctor’s practice uses the AthenaHealth portal to manage their practice, so I logged in to fill out the usual background information.

One dropdown asked for my race and provided me hundreds and hundreds of options – literally several hundred.  Every imaginable American Indian tribe you could imagine was represented, and many that I had never heard of, but oddly, Caucasian was absent.

Normally I identify as Caucasian but that wasn’t on the menu. Out of all those options, Old White Guy wasn't one.

There were options for English, Wales, Scottish and German, all four of which accurately define my ancestry in equal measures.  (Shouldn’t they have said Welsh instead of Wales?) But I could only select one and couldn’t decide which to choose.

Finally, I noticed ‘Iowa’ was an option.  I was born in Iowa.  I happy to identify as Iowan … so few people
do.  I generally identify as Missourian having grown up there, but that was not an option.

So today coming out as an Iowan. 

Next, I am going to edit the Wikipedia page for Iowa to add a picture of myself as an example of a Native Iowan…

Hello to an Iowan, from a Hoosier! 😄

Was Hoosier even an offering on your list?

My pharmaceutical insurer for what Medicare doesn't seem to cover, sends me a statement each month delineating what they have paid, what I still owe, and what Medicare paid. Takes less than one page, since I take little in the way of medication. Why it is felt that I need this information monthly I don't truly gather, but perhaps folks with major drug needs might need this information.

Also included in the unnecessary monthly mailing to me, is a letter, asking me what language I would prefer to receive my statement in - the list of possible languages runs four typed single space pages - many of the languages I have never even heard of after a long professional life in the USA, 15 years of post high school education and 4 years of post graduate training and having travelled in over a dozen foreign countries. As a world traveller I am a novice, but not a total rube.

I wonder what the sum total cost of this repeated monthly questionaire and associated 4 typed pages in the mailing is for the my insurer's national foot print.

It must be a significant sum.