Ask Lemmy

Where's the one guy who had "good" insurance but still almost died because his employer was being bought out when he got sick

Been having pretty bad chest pain on and off all week. If I go to the hospital and it's something serious it could bankrupt me. However, if I don't go, and I expire, at least my life insurance will cover the house so my family will have somewhere to live.

Shitty physical therapist twice raised what I owed per visit because of their clerk's incompetence. Not just for future visits but retroactively for visits I already had. (Edit: I should say this was possibly fraud and if I had a lawyer it may have been worth pursuing).

I knew I was screwed when the clerk pronounced tier as tire. Oh well, lesson also learned for me: Always conduct a three-way, recorded conference call with provider and your insurer before provided service.

Another fun fact; Per KFF, 50% of Americans forego medical attention for free of medical debt. Naturally, this snowballs leading to them inevitably going anyway for a more costly, complex procedure. Our system is top-heavy with specialists for this reason, lacking adequate preventative care and rapid accessibility.

Cigna dropped my medicine coverage. I had to to drop two name brands simultaneously to generic else i would be out 4k every 30 days.

The switch was not pretty.
Like, mental breakdown, life changing, never-will-be-the-same not pretty.
That was..8 years ago. I imagine if it was something maintaining my physical health I certainly would have died. I mean, shit, I nearly did. Don't get me started on the arm i broke as a kid, that didn't heal correctly because a narcissist parent(RN) wanted to skip the er wait and had hospital buddies patch me up on the dl instead. A bionic arm sounds more feasible than actually getting it to where I could play strings again without pain.

it was seemingly resolved but I did get a $1600 bill years after getting some bloodwork done due to one of the myriad tests “not being pre authorized” After a millions backs and fourths between the billing department at the hospital and my insurance it was determined that what had happened was the 3rd party company that “authorizes” blood work (after a doctor orders it and insurance reviews it and the patient gets the blood stolen) had changed names and somehow the idiots in the billing department at the hospital that deals with this company on a daily basis somehow didn’t know this. Why was I the one who had to figure this out and not the people paid to do that? Only Brian Thompson knows.

Related, my insurance changed its name this July, let everyone know repeatedly for months, but that didnt stop some clerical agent at my drs. office to message me and say they don’t take my insurance and are beginning the offboarding process until I told them its literally the same company. Their response was basically the Ah, Eto… BLEGH meme.

I feel like these companies will change their names constantly just as another attempt to not pay out what they are supposed to.

Bunch of dental work all done with no payment at time of service. Fantastic PCP. Amazing rheumatologist. A 10k infusion every two months costs me $5.

I would probably work for no pay with my medical issues.

Just paying good money all these years and now I am concerned that I might be fucked over.

They appear to be targeting more complex and high cost patients with these tactics while mandane shit just get push through without too much drama.

But there still issues like residual billing which are technically illegal but some how still happen.

Point being, if you have not been fucked over like these horror stories, do you trust these people when you will need them?

I don't.

It's been nearly two months since Publix filled my prescription. At the one month mark I sent my refill to CVS instead and they filled it the next day. I have no fucking clue what's wrong.

I went in for a $10,000 surgery. Told them to bill my insurance and I came out with a bill for almost $30,000! Insurance barely paid $7,000 left me with the rest

20 years of hell.

Crossposting to !AskUSA@discuss.online

Went to a clinic to get birth control, had to convince them I wasn't interested in using it to control whether or not I gave birth, when I finally got a prescription it turned out it would cost over $100 for the medication.

When I went on a trip to the US I bought a relatively expensive travel insurance as I knew if something would've happened I would be screwed forever.

It did cost me about 80 eur but they claimed 100% cost coverage without copay or any of that nonsense. The coverage was for a whole year but only 60 days after the start of the vacation. It also included legal insurance for medical things with a max payout of 100,000 eur and medical transport back to Germany if possible and necessary.

Did not need to use it fortunately but they advertised that they even covered stuff like decompression chambers after a dive accident. I wonder how much I would've needed to fight them if it came to it but I had a cheaper coverage with similar coverage from them when I went to Turkey. There I got the whole sum after I went to the hospital for a really bad insect sting without any fuzz. But it was only a hundred euros or so.

Fortunately this is the closest near contact with the us healthcare system.

Mine are all boring shit like my insurance deciding how many relapses of cancer my mom was allowed to fight or them challenging my surgery a month before despite having gotten pre approval or needing pre approval at least once a year for a med I'd been on for a decade.

But a friend had an actually entertaining one, she had trans bottom surgery and they paid for everything except for the "removal of the penis" which they demanded to know why it was necessary

Edit: sorry thought it said health insurance story