For the second year in a row, I must apologize to Carlene MacMillan, M.D. She is my wife, and I want you to know she has no other nicknames. I don't call Carly. I don't call her Carlatta. Nobody does. Her friends call her Carlene. Her family calls her Carlene. That's her name. It's her birthday today. Unfortunately, I won't be able to take her out to dinner for her birthday. There was an issue with the prior authorization of tonight’s dinner—but that was last year, and thanks to a subsequent review, it's determined that Carlene is, in fact, romantically necessary. Unfortunately, we're still not going to be able to have dinner tonight.
We were asked for prior authorization last Valentine's Day prior to that meal, and it was determined that it wasn't romantically necessary because I hadn't tried biosimilar partners (e.g., I had not had a date with Claire Danes yet):
Updated references. 4/2020 Updated references and Bio-similar confirmation as per protocol:
6/2021 Annual review. Updated references. 6/2022 Annual review. Updated references.
After some rather robust lobbying efforts, I'm proud to say that some of the roadblocks to our planned romantic dinner have borne fruit. The prior bio-similar trial requirement has been dropped! Their required number of romantic gestures has been revised from four to two. However, due to a miscalculation on my part, I inform you that you will have to go to dinner by yourself tonight.
You see, a Romantically Unlikely Edit (RUE) also applies to birthday celebrations. Romantically unlikely edits are hardcoded into the booking software for all relevant restaurants. This is designed to prevent accidental bookings at two restaurants at the same time, or with one person twice on the same day, because who the hell is going to provide a romantic meal and then another romantic dinner on the birthday of their wife or partner when they have been married, what is it, ten years?
Most of these are romantic unlikely edits, including two separate orders of a dozen roses at the same time sent to the same individual are intended to prevent fraud, waste, abuse, and being far too cute for a couple who have been married for this long.
So, remember when I brought you an English muffin with butter this morning for breakfast in bed? It was really cute to me, right? Well, there's a problem. It turns out that breakfast in bed is counted as a birthday meal with romantic intent. So, unbeknownst to me, the ability to book a dinner is foreclosed. There is a Romantically Unlikely Edit!
This dinner outing this evening was blocked as romantically unlikely. It turns out this isn't due to our insurance plan. Even if they wanted to authorize it, they couldn't. Romantically Unlikely Edits are pushed to the OpenTable and Resy code sets that regulate all reservations. Resy and OpenTable both use this CMS code set to determine which reservations to allow.
The good news is that there's an open comment period happening right now in which we, and everyone else, can leave a comment on romance.gov, and let the Centers for Marriage and Snuggling (CMS for short) understand our stance on more than one romantic take me out on the day of somebody's birthday. This is completely likely, and breakfast in bed plus dinner out or a standard in the community. We hope they will read these comments and adjust the romance standards accordingly. The downside is these changes won't go into effect until 2025.
I wish I had better news, and thank you for being married to someone like me.
P.S. If you want to have the real experience of being married to me, you could do what Carlene is doing and read my new book, Inessential Pharmacology. (amazon affiliate link)
Biosimilar partner 😆
She's stunning, by the way.
I will fight that RUE just as we have successfully done for the TMS MUE as of July 1!