by Donald N.S. Unger – www.donunger.com
Welcome to FaceMed Ad-Supported Healthcare: Free Market (Free!) Medical Care for the Internet Age!™ We are delighted to have you as a member.
Because our customer service line is only available Tuesday through Thursday, between 1:00 a.m. and 2:00 a.m. GMT—and our website is usually, as matter of policy, down—we provide this quick FAQ to answer common questions about our program.
Privacy Notice: You have none.
No Go Areas: There are none.
Entertainment-Based Manipulation of Results: In addition to ad targeting, our business model relies on the “reality show” value of your healthcare. We may therefore, on occasion—but no more than four times in any calendar year—present you with “alternative” test results or medical assessments, for the purpose of entertaining those who choose to follow your medical profile.
Ridicule: Please be aware that the ongoing documentation, manipulation, and public dissemination of your medical records can lead to ridicule, in some cases at a fairly intense level. You are likely familiar with the “Harry Has Hemorrhoids” internet meme. This was a rare situation in which things became sufficiently problematic that the member was relegated to the Patient Relocation Program (subcontracted from the US Marshals Service). This extraction service is provided strictly at our discretion—and almost never happens.
Humiliation: Your personal feelings of inadequacy, chagrin, embarrassment, or rage, related to our use of your medical data is strictly your own problem. The FaceMed Plan explicitly excludes coverage for any mental health issue alleged to be caused by the plan itself.
Profile Linking: We may correlate your medical data with that of other patients—FaceMed members or not. This is in service of the production of such hilarious short videos as “How Manuel Gave Betty Genital Warts” [Over three million hits, as of this writing, btw!] and “Rajiv Has Fungus!”
Knock-On Consequences: In the above described circumstance or similar, FaceMed shall be held harmless for any resulting consequences of this public correlation and use of data. Betty and Manuel had other partners, for example, and those relationships did not survive the public release of their medical information. In such situations or similar, all costs—including but not limited to: physical, social, emotional, or financial—shall be borne by the user(s).
Retention of Data: This is simple. Once we have it, you’re never getting it back.
Data Sharing: As a corollary to the above, we will do whatever we want to with your data, sharing it with other people, entities, or governments as we see fit and in perpetuity.
Severance & Termination Penalties: We deeply respect the authority and the autonomy of our members; we’re here to serve you! You have a right of recision for a full sixty-minute period after you have opted into the program. Thereafter, should your participation be terminated, whether by your choice or ours, you will be charged the full cost of care for your period of enrolment, rounded up to the nearest year. At the time of this writing, that cost is $25,000 but we fully expect costs to rise on an annual basis, and you will be charged the fee in place at time of termination for all previous years.
Again: Welcome Aboard! You’ve made the right decision: You no longer have to worry about the cost of healthcare and you can rest easy, knowing that your maladies, illnesses and medical catastrophes will be a source of entertainment for millions of people across the globe!
This work reprinted with permission and originally posted at The Satirist.