Extraneous: Not essential or vital. Accidental. Irrelevant.
Do you have any extraneous body parts? Asking for a friend. I didn’t know I had any for the first part of my life. They taught me in school that all your parts work together to form a complete human. Nothing was said about any parts being accidental or irrelevant except, maybe, tonsils.
My education was updated when I got a full-time job and medical insurance. That was my job as a food inspector for the USDA. I rejoiced that my body would be covered should it break down and need adjustment.
As a food inspector, I needed my nose to smell out bad stuff, my eyes to see bad stuff, my brain to interpret what I was seeing, and my ears to hear what my supervisor was saying about me. These body parts seem pretty vital to me whether you are an inspector or not. However, I soon found out that was not the case.
My first shock came when I discovered my teeth were nonessential. I had a cavity that needed to be filled, but my insurance didn’t cover it. I had to pay out of pocket for it. My insurance only paid for a part of the bill for cleaning my teeth. Horse patooey!
One of the seldom discussed workplace injuries that food inspectors and the plant people who work beside them experience is damage to their eyes due to fluorescent lighting. I had excellent eyesight when I joined the USDA. I could see a squirrel pop its head out of its hole from a quarter mile away. I could dissect a fly without magnification. After a few years of my eyes being pummeled with fluorescent lighting, I needed glasses. Did my insurance cover my glasses? No. Eyes, apparently, are nonessential, not vital, accidental body parts. Also, they are not covered under workplace injuries for this kind of damage.
Of course, it’s well known that to keep the food supply safe, food inspectors do not need to see those little, tiny pieces of manure on the carcasses of chickens flying by at 34 birds per minute, or on cattle with their larger carcasses flying by at one every ten seconds or on any other animals flying down a line and into your shopping cart. Horse patooey!
As an inspector, especially one working on a line but also offline personnel, one must make many decisions in a short period of time. A line inspector might need to make as many as 50 decisions in the period of a minute. For this reason, a clear and uncluttered mind is needed. Now we all know that especially with modern life the mind can get befuddled and confused. We might need to go to a counselor or even a psychiatrist to get straightened out. I soon found out that this is not considered to be a part of a healthy person. My insurance did not cover my brain. Horse patooey!
After studying and participating in Medicare, our health insurance for older folks, I have discovered that those body parts considered to be nonessential by the health insurance I had with my job, are also considered to be nonessential by Medicare. Now to be fair, I must say that after a lot of shouting, all these medical plans began offering plans that covered these nonessential body parts to some extent. Medical insurance is not cheap and neither were these additions to the original plans. The bottom line is that now you can insure those extraneous body parts, but at an extra cost because they are not essential enough to be covered under your regular health plan.
I have focused on food inspectors and Medicare recipients, but this probably is the same for other occupations as well. Air traffic controllers and policemen clearly do not need good vision, nor do they need to have minds in working order. I’m sure you can think of many other professions in similar circumstances such as surgeons and electricians.
Who needs their teeth? Or their eyes or their minds? The insurance companies are correct. These are all extraneous parts and probably should be discontinued on the next model. AI will take care of everything anyway.