Last time I had a surgery, I wrote "by participating in this surgery, all participants confirm they are covered under bcbs, and agree to waiver payment if not" right below the surgery site.

The doctor got a kick out of it, says apparently I 'got' one of his aides, who saw it, said his coverage was lapsed, and ask if a patient could do that. The doctor said he made him stand in the corner for 30 mins while they did my shoulder repair.

Virtually all of our politicians love it.

What amazes me is Americans doing this to themselves. Literally acting against their own best interests, putting their lives and wellbeing in the hands of companies only concerned about profit.

American health insurance? That's not how it works in other countries

I hear you. How does one pirate health insurance?

And then having to send emails back and forth for months talking to several people, taking days off work and spending hours on the phone for clearance to watch stranger things and having it be denied because of some obscure reason that is going to take you several more days off work to try to get clearance to watch the show again

Americans are amazing. Their healthcare system is literally killing them and ruining their families, and they keep talking about how bad "socialism" is...

The amount of bullshit this people buy is incredible.

Just imagine living in a first world country where they provide free Netflix instead of maintaining an insanely large military.

It's much worse because you can choose not to watch Netflix but you don't have much choice if you are sick.

It's more like receiving a bill for songs you hear on the radio in the grocery store, on the bus, in other people's cars passing by. You didn't ask for the benefit, could not really negotiate it, but it was useful to you when you got it. You could maybe avoid it by not leaving your house.

After recently apartment hunting, I have a (slightly tangential) gripe to add on here.

When I was getting my income verification (to prove I could afford the proposed rent), it went off gross income - what you make before taxes and so-called “benefits” are taken out. The hundreds I pay each month for the “benefit” of being insured make a significant difference between what I make and what I take home. Do I make 3x a given rent? Well technically, by gross income, I do. But my net income is where that rent payment comes from, so the chunk of my take-home going toward rent is absolutely higher than 1/3 of the net income I can actually use.

I have no choice but to pay for this “benefit.” Notice I keep using quotation marks. That’s because I think the term is bullshit. I think a work-sponsored benefit should be something work provides. Yeah, maybe they got a “deal” to offer insurance to employees for lower than it’d cost to buy for ourselves, but come on. If work really wanted to call it a “benefit,” they should pay us more so the numbers even out on our take-home. We’re forced into these situations, yet employers have the nerve to use a term that implies they’re offering some special bonus to us.

Okay, enough ranting for now. No, wait - prescriptions! That’s another health-related cost that isn’t deducted, that I still have to pay for, despite having insurance.

The screws keep tightening around us workers and there’s no escape. I really hope Mamdani sparks inspiration across the country, because this shit is untenable.

Maybe we should try voting harder for representatives that are owned by the corrupt insurance companies and their shareholders

So this sucks but you can avoid this with a simple trick. Call your insurance company first with the CPT codes for what you need done and where you plan to get it done. Your doctors office can give you the codes. They aren’t a trade secret or anything. Get diagnoses codes too if you can. Have the insurance company run the codes for you before you go. This does a couple things:

1. You verify everyone involved is in network (be wary of anesthesiologists)
2. You are getting a quote on a recorded line. The end price won’t be exact (especially is if the claim involves a hospital, fuck them, go to smaller providers whenever you can)
3. if you get sticker shock anyway, you can call the insurance company back on that same recorded line and say the word “misquote”. This triggers an investigation that can strengthen your appeal.
4. You now have evidence you can file internally with a quality of care/quality of service complaint if the provider did something shady with the billing, or with your state’s department of insurance if your insurance company is being bitchy.

Ideally, we would have single payer insurance, but we instead have a government that pays itself to make private enterprise do its job, then the shareholders in that private enterprise make sure nothing ever gets changed. -sigh-

In the mean time, if you really want to fuck them over, consider switching to health insurance company that does not have shareholders. In many states, they are legally mandated to refund any profit they make over a certain percentage at the end of the year and without shareholders, it’s harder to hide the money, which puts much more pressure on them to spend it on patient care.

United Health Care want you to believe their way is the only way to do this. They are wrong. A shareholder-free insurer still isn’t perfect but the pressures are different without the parasites.

and the rest of the economy is heading in this direction soon. Rent seeking needs to be outlawed

In Taiwan, I pay for Universal Healthcare because I own a business. 5800nt(185usd) every 2 months for a familyof 4. It would be 3000nt(100usd)for 2 months if it's just myself.

The copay is 10usd for everything. Fever? Food poisoning? Chemotherapy? All the same cost. This includes all the medications and all incidental costs.

If you worked for a Taiwan company, you don't have to pay the 5800nt. But the copay is the same.

How about when the website explicitly says your subscription covers Stranger Things, but you watch Stranger Things, and they then bill you $80.

Then you follow the steps to dispute it on their website. And they say they didn't make any mistakes. Then you do the follow-up appeal via snail-mail and they say that there's still nothing wrong.

(My experience with UHC and a cholesterol test)

It's not stupid, it's nefarious. Free Luigi!

I stopped paying for health insurance years ago, no way I can afford it now. I just get it through my state system.