Hospital informs man of his own death

[emupaul]

just some local news from my township, i was bored and thought i would share..


"A local man who got a letter from CIGNA Medicare Services informing him of his own death has found that coming back to life can be a bureaucratic nightmare"

http://www.rrstar.com/homepage/x1558730980...n-of-own-demise

http://www.rrstar.com/homepage/x1558730980...n-of-own-demise

 

[Veho]

What amazes me is that the letter was addressed to him.

"Dear Sir or Madam,

We regret to inform you that you're dead.

Sincerely, Medicare."

That makes sense, you know, in case he failed ot notice that minor detail. A mere technicality, really, that one does tend to overlook, so they had to inform him in writing.

How do you go disproving that anyway?

"But I'm not dead, I'm resting!"

"No, you're dead."

"I'm merely pining for the fjords."

"No, no, no, we're afraid we can't have this. This is altogether too silly. Who are you to contradict the mighty Medicare? You are dead. You are no more. You are gone. Kaputt. Done with. Run down the curtain and joined the choir invisible. It will do you no good to argue with us, you can't succeed. Who's the trained medical professional 'round here, eh?"


Database "features" always crack me up.

 

[FAST6191]

Guy has a perfect opportunity to fall off the grid and he wastes it like this. Oh well I hear a third of all Europeans have yet to play this internet game anyhow so I am probably not going to be hurting for a while.

On the other hand if I hear "sir the computer says" one more time it will probably result in a series of events that causes me to become worlds most wanted 10 years ahead of plan.

 

[Veho]

This reminds me of an excellent short story by Gordon R. Dickson, Computers Don't Argue. FAST, I think you'd love it. It's about how a database form error can have disastrous cumulative results. And the best part is, it was written in 1965., but it might as well have been written this week, it still applies, as the above example shows.

It's crazy, really, people have known about computer errors and software design flaws that allow such errors to appear in the first place 40 years ago, yet they still do nothing to avoid those very same flaws. Their contingency planning seems to consist of saying "situations that I can't think of can never ever occurr, otherwise I would have thought of them" and leaving it at that.

Like assigning only two digits to represent a person's age on a form. "I can't see a problem there, can you?"

 

[Overlord Nadrian]

There's some guy in my neighbourhood who has to send a letter to the mayor each month to say he isn't dead yet.

 

[Veho]

There's some guy in my neighbourhood who has to send a letter to the mayor each month to say he isn't dead yet.

"I ATEN'T DEAD"









Get the reference and win a cookie.