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Three years ago I decided take advantage of my fancy dental insurance. I never had it before and it cost only $19 a month. I thought I'd have my teeth cleaned so I would look like like a movie star and called Aetna (yes, that's who it is) to find an in-network provider. And they sent me to Doctor C1 who had flat-screen tv's in his waiting room with ads for cosmetic restoration of teeth and some tear-off Botox coupons at the receptionists counter for me to take care of my battered nose. Provided really excellent dental care. And I wound up paying him a lot of money from time to time and didn't worry about it too much because I figured everything's gone up in price including dentistry. If I hadn't had the insurance I would have been paying a lot more and taking a part time job.

But the Big Kahuna came down last week. I had a toothache, just little, and went to my combat-zone basic tooth-pounder. Who took an xray and told me that I would need a root canal proceedure and he didn't do that except with a nine millimeter in burglary emergencies.

In my investigations with Aetna and a couple other dentists who actually did root canals, I suddenly found that my original provider, C1, was an out-of-network practitioner, Oh Horrors!, and that his associate in another location, C2, was an in-network person. Thank you Aetna! So I went racing to C2 who said they were accepting new patients, but they didn't do root canals and they always referred Root Canals to C1.

Now this might be something to just laugh about or sue somebody about except my dental clock is ticking. What is just an occasional zing in my #15 molar today is going to be a screaming siren in a week or ten days and I don't have time to shop around. So C1 is going to get my money. $600-and-some after the 65% Aetna pays for out-of-network services. (Not the 80% an in-network would pay...)

Once this tooth is fixed and I stop worrying about it, I am going to do something not nice to Aetna. I don't know what it will be yet. Maybe hack their computer network and charge their top executives for the Federal Bailout.

But today it isn't hurting much at all and I am going to have bacon and eggs for supper against next week sometime when I will eat baby food for a couple days to be nice to the newly manicured molar. Don't you just hate it when that happens? Ta!