I signed up for 2017 healthcare coverage today. I would have put it off a few days more, but I really wanted the emails to stop.

This is the intended effect of the emails, making sure everyone doesn’t put it off until the last day and then swamping the call centers, but I could have done without the reminder that I was procrastinating. “You could save as much as $28 if you update your 2017 plan now!” the emails happily exclaimed, as though my new recommended plan wasn’t an additional $350, a finger tip, and .5% of my soul.

Money matters aside, I felt a little insulted that the government needed to keep reminding me to update. Ranging from a cheery “Open enrollment is here!” to a terrifying “TIME’S RUNNING OUT,” the emails kept streaming in because I was too busy considering how little coverage I could get by on.

The phone calls started around this point, too. I don’t answer if I don’t know the number, but that didn’t stop the voicemails. “Jean, sign up for healthcare now!” they shrieked desperately as I ignored them in favor of shooting ghouls in a post-apocalyptic world. “If you don’t, you’re going to regret it! You need to do this! You need to do this RIGHT NOW so that when you INVARIABLY have problems you won’t CALL US LAST MINUTE and YELL AT US even though we’re ONLY DOING OUR JOB.”

At least, that’s what I assume they were getting at.

But the important thing is that the nagging worked, I’m now covered, and my new insurance plan for a young single healthy person on the east coast is only moderately abysmal. As a matter of fact, I’m paying a whole $2 less per month than I was last year, and I only had to drop two levels of coverage to keep it that way!

If there’s a lesson in this, it’s somethingsomething there’s actually no lesson in this. You pay a lot of money for a plan you’ll never use that won’t cover you for the same amount of money that you’ve spent, and have a happy new year.