I read the article (it’s long) and I was shaking and fuming. I’ll get to that later on.
“The only point I said wasn’t true was this”
Can we hit the reset button on this? I was having a pleasant discussion with you where, although we didn’t agree on everything, we discussed things peacefully and respectfully. What I meant to say what that there possibly could have been a better choice of words. You probably didn’t mean any harm but comments like that can potentially be perceived as a personal attack and disturb the flow of the conversation.
Most of the complaints against healthcare were, in my opinion, unfairly pointed at insurance companies. As I mentioned earlier, they cannot raise premiums at their whim and 80% or 85% of premiums must go to providers, any additional premiums collected are returned.
As far as the government providing free health care and dental care- I think theoretically a government should but given the culture of the citizens here we’re way too far away from that becoming a reality. (The money has to come from somewhere and people need to take more responsibility for their health. Until that happens any attempt will implode pretty fast.)
I feel bad for you for the trouble you’re going through with health insurers- I normally don’t have those kinds of stories. The issues I’ve had normally begin with a claim being denied due to a provider putting an incorrect diagnosis code or procedure code (they’re extremely confusing) and then the insurance company not paying until the error is corrected. I then get the run around from the provider who wants to get paid (their billing department says that they can’t change what the doctor wrote) and the doctor who doesn’t have time to call back or review / correct the records. These could take months to resolve and even get sent to collection agencies (I know it’s frustrating) but ultimately, it’s not the insurer at fault.
As far as the story you mentioned is concerned- I hope that’s the exception and not the norm. I found it sickening that they were willing to save money by taking a business risk at the expense of a different human’s quality of life. Equally as sickening was the immature giggling you can hear in their phone conversation when they came up with the excuse to discontinue his drug coverage. (Even if they had a valid reason to deny the claim- any human that can laugh at saving money at the expense of another human has no business being making any health decision for anyone else.)
If this unfortunately does go on on a regular basis then I take back what I wrote earlier and agree that health insurers share a larger percentage of blame in this mess than I earlier attributed to them.
Have a Gut Shabbos