Walking through the MUNI station today I almost couldn’t contain my anger over a certain health insurance company, that happens to be my own and its obnoxious ad campain. First of all, Kaiser has to be the most smug health insurance company in the world. So demanding, always insisting that I “thrive.” What if I don’t want to thrive? Maybe I want to wither. Or what if I’m happy where and how I am and just want to chill for a bit? Do I have to be constantly agressively thriving just to meet the needs of my demanding health insurance company? Is my doctor going to tsk tsk next time I have a normal checkup, dissapointed that my health is only average, not above average?
What’s worse about the ads is that they advertise forms of health care that are, as far as I know, not even covered by Kaiser, like acupuncture, and smiling. And all of these panels have the attitude of supreme know-it-allness, a quality that we all learned to hate as small children. All except that one kid in class, the one who clearly grew up to be the head of this ad campaign. “Did you know,” asks the panel coyly, “that an optimistic man is 35% less likely to develop diseases?” I’m not sure who could enter a Kaiser building and remain optimistic, but he who does must indeed be superhuman. Or, another panel might suggest a massage, or maybe a nice round of acupuncture over “traditional” therapies like medicine. Last time I checked, buddy, meditation didn’t make my fever of 104 go down when I had the flu last month. Tylenol did. And why the hell would a company that sells medicine, from doctors, be hawking “alternative” therapies anyway? So the bills are higher when the desperate patient finally does drag their ass to the doctor?
I’m convinced there must be some sort of reverse psychology shit at work here. Because the last part of the campaign is so mind bogglingly vexing that even I, a healthy young woman in her twenties, felt the need to get my blood pressure checked after exiting the station. Along the walls, on each side of the station, were three panels. That makes six in total. Four of these, two on either side, were completely blank. The third was a panel saying you’re welcome. For the other two panels. The two panels served, Kaiser says, a “break from sensory overload.” But now my mind is has anger overload! Four blank panels…thank you, kaiser, for paying for four blank panels that probably cost a couple hundred thousand dollars each instead of, oh, I don’t know, not charging me insane premiums or exorbitant “co-pays” for prescriptions that I have to take if I have any hope at all of thriving, as you are so insistant that I do?
And it gets worse! As you exit the station onto the mezzanine level you’re greeted with two large columns. Now, these columns are usually decked out in their usual neat seventies oval tiles. But someone (guess who) has WRAPPED both columns in what appears to be poop. On closer inspection, it turns out to be merely a very large picture of poop. On even closer inspection, it is actually the representation of a tree trunk if a tree trunk were both headless (leafless?) and not out of place in a MUNI station in the middle of downtown San Francisco. And, of course, up top was another annoyingly smug “YOU’RE WELCOME” from Kaiser, saying that we’d better enjoy this lovely “nature” for soon, when Kaiser starts spending extrordinary amounts of money on lowering costs for sick kids with sickle cell anemia or some such disease instead of fuglying up the muni station with its nagging and faux- wood, we’ll no longer be privy to this delightful treat. But by then, they’ll have people flooding to its doors demanding respite from the ads themselves.
Come to think of it, I think I’ll go get a nice long massage. Or some acupuncture. Damn it. Where’s that number for Kaiser…we’d better make it a Zanax.