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.
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.
oh no Netflix is getting ideas
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:
- You verify everyone involved is in network (be wary of anesthesiologists)
- 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)
- 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.
- 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.
Any tips on finding an insurance company in your state that doesn’t have shareholders? A big part of the insurance issue is that you have to practically be an industry insider to navigate… Anything in insurance, really.
is this seriously what you americans have to do?
Freedom isn’t free
It’s like they’ve made the system so convoluted that you have to be an underwriter to receive services.
The fact you have to jump through these hoops at all IS FUCKING STUPID AND ISNT HOW IT SHOULD WORK.
A shareholder-free insurer still isn’t perfect but the pressures are different without the parasites.
This is the first time I see this solution mentioned. It doesn’t seem to be known much. Why would a single payer insurance lower costs further?
Single payer means more people are in the group, diluting risk further. There’s no way to compete with that. The costs are impossible to beat.
There must be a limit to the necessary size. Small countries can offer affordable health care. So an insurer of that size should be able to handle the risk as efficiently.
It kinda scales. What’s the likelihood of 10 million people at once being sick in a country of 10 million? And what’s the likelihood in a country of 300 million?
The number of sick people also scales. The likelihood for 100 thousand sick out of 10 million is the same as 3 million sick out of 300 million.
What changes is the variation. If you have 10 people, it’s possible that all are sick at the same time. All being sick is much less likely for 10 million and even less for 300 million.
An insurance company must have a certain size to handle variation but after that point a bigger size is not needed for that but can help with other properties.
The country needs more diversity. Please visit us first and bring your culture.
It’s not stupid, it’s nefarious. Free Luigi!
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.
Taiwan sounds amazing!
in Spain , if only one out of x people in their family works, all the rest of the family members are insured for universal healthcare, as long as they are legal residents or citizens of course.
In Canada, you pay nothing for anything that isn’t elective as long as you’re a resident. You just need to register for a healthcare number which can be done at admittance.
I guess I need to look into tiwanese citizenship
Sadly enough for you, the whole nation just died by syntax error.
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.
I didn’t build this fucking hellscape. I was born into it and I’m doing my best. Unless all the boomers and billionaires die off, we are trapped like this.
10 years ago, we almost had medicare for all as a public healthcare option. We were soooo close. But congress fucked it up necause they were lobbied by ins companies who knew everyone with a brain would flock to the public option.
And what the insurance companies got instead was literally a law forcing everyone to buy their shitty products. Imagine the tobacco companies being so successful at lobbying that they got a law passed requiring everybody to smoke.
Team Trump floated that as their healthcare plan a few days ago as well
What, requiring people to smoke?
Forcing everyone to pay premiums
Hey, some of us Americans just elected democratic socialists as our mayors.
TBF a shitload of us know how socialized health care works. We want it.
There’s a massive, massive industry that is working very hard to make sure that it doesn’t happen.
I work in healthcare. I feel like more and more people are wanting some sort of universal healthcare in the last few years, even if they are conservative, even if they’ll vote against it, and even if the term “universal healthcare” will have them up in arms. But the concept itself? They’re all for it, they complain that healthcare is too expensive and insurance companies aren’t covering things and the system needs to change. They’re getting there. It’s taking them getting fucked over for it to happen and most of us may be dead of completely preventable causes first, but they just might get there.
I work the other side of this. We do everything we are legally permitted to do to get this shit paid but there are limits. A big one is while we can tell a provider what’s wrong with a claim and why it denied, we can’t tell them how to bill. It’s illegal. We have to be very careful how we tell them to correct a claim.
This process is inefficient and we hate it. But it’s so much worse when they hire overseas call centers to process their billing for them. I have no doubt there are many intelligent Indian people who can do this but a big local hospital in my area goes out of their way to avoid hiring them. So they fuck up a claim. We tell them, as much as we are legally permitted to, how to fix it. They either do not understand the language we are speaking (not a racist remark, a literal statement. Some of them can speak English but cannot understand it spoken to them.) or refused to follow directions and just keep telling us to do it again.
I get it. I work for the devil. But the overseas reps (and now AI bots) make this so much worse. Nobody is saving any money by doing it this way.
Please please please legislate us into obsolescence people. If I hear one more old lady tell me she can’t afford insulin anymore I’m buying a noose.
Living amongst these people is a baffling and frustrating experience.
Their systems are killing them, their cops are killing them, their guns are killing them, their politicians are on record saying they hate them, their religious leaders are clearly stealing from them while they abuse their children, they hate traffic but refuse to do anything about including keeping cars but using roundabouts, and the propaganda that they claim is corrupting their minds is so pathetic that even a toddler should be able to see past it like it’s made of crystal-clear glass.
The reason I hate the US is because they have zero excuses and still fuck things up in so many obvious ways while anyone with more than a few braincells screams at them to please just stop chugging rat poison and all they can say is “but it’s different here, we aren’t Europe” as if that’s any kind of excuse.
You are consuming far too much of the exact same mainstream media narrative that got us into this mess. All you’re really telling me is that you are from a country Putin is not interested in, or your own friends and neighbors would be going batshit crazy too.
And before you excuse yourself thinking you’d never personally do that, that you are just way too smart for propaganda to ever be swayed by it, given your own propensity for unambiguously consuming media narratives and attaching your personal emotions to whatever caricatures of reality you’ve been shown, like you’ve just demonstrated in your comment, you’d probably be first in line to fall for the right-wing foreign-funded propaganda we’ve been flooded with for decades now.
EDITED a comma
Ok.
O and I’m sure you’re country is a bastion of moral superiority. Considering how well your English is I suppose you’re from western Europe? I’m sure I can dig up a whole bunch of shit on your country of origin.
Canada, and I will readily admit to us also being quite fucked up and getting worse. I’m disappointed in our behaviour, but at least we don’t go around acting like we’re hot shit. It’s not the US’s problems that piss me off, it’s their dogshit attitude about how great they are while sucking at almost everything they can’t just throw money at and then use to make even more money.
Canada
I’m genuinely sorry to hear that, not just because I actually know how far our right-wing shit has reached into your country, but because I am aware that we never had a better friend than Canada, and without Canada to the north and Mexico to the south the 20th century would not have been nearly as meteoric as it was: without Canada we would have FAR less to brag about. I hope you are aware of just how many of us are on your side, how many of us are the ones telling you to “keep it up” with the boycotts and yelling “Elbows up!” when we see or hear another way Canada has decided to resist, because we are not represented in the media.
Canada has never been anything but the best friend my country ever had, from helping us in disaster to joining us in war, and you deserve far better than the neighbor from hell to the south. And while that does not make what you wrote correct or even anything less than arrogant and entirely dependent on stereotype, it does make me genuinely sorry, because we’ll never have a better friend on the national stage, and it will be a cold day in hell before Canada forgives us. Deservedly so.
I wish you would have said that you were from France or Sweden or something it would have been a lot harder for me to find crap about your country because France and Sweden are better countries than America.
But you’re from Canada…
Throw money at it that’s absolutely beautiful Canada has some of the most predatory car loans probably in the world…
I grew up in Detroit so I’ve been to Canada a lot. You having anything bad to say about America is the most clinical definition of the pot calling the kettle black I have ever seen.
Stupidity is highly infectious
Christ on a stick. Universal healthcare has nothing to do with socialism. Government programs that serve the public are part of the government’s core purpose in the first place.
It is remarkable how many people on this platform champion “socialism” when what they actually mean is social democracy. The difference is substantial.
Socialism does not work. It has never worked. No nation has prospered under socialism, and none will as long as scarcity remains.
Why should only healthcare work if run by government? Government could run all industries.
I can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic or not… If you’re not that’s the most brain dead thing I’ve ever heard in a long time.
Why can’t the government serve the public and provide all needed goods and not just healthcare? Where is the limit that prevents socialism?
Socialism doesn’t preclude the end of Private Business.
If the government controlled all private businesses where would they get money to operate? How woukd they collect taxes? How do you encourage innovation? philanthropy?
Like in health care, the businesses continue to make money. The government can continue to tax its businesses or use all profits.
Innovation is usually the argument against government healthcare. If that is not a problem for you, why should there be one in other areas? However, most research is publicly funded anyway.
Philanthropy would also have to shift to the state. The state funds theaters and museums. It could take care of more causes.
Where do you see problems?
Fuck the American healthcare system and fuck Netflix
Just imagine living in a first world country where they provide free Netflix instead of maintaining an insanely large military.
Just imagine living in a first world country
Don’t be smug about it. American insurance companies will eventually also come to your country.
Maybe, maybe not. Our right wing idiots at least seem to value their own health and wellness enough to not approve of dismantling healthcare.
As an American, I’d rather die a preventable death then share free healthcare with someone I don’t think deserves it! /s
How dare someone who is dying of cancer and is too sick to work anymore get free Netflix! They can work for it like everyone else! I’m not subsidizing their Netflix /s
I’ve heard people honestly defending paying more for healthcare rather than having “freeloaders”.
Do you ever ask them why they’re paying more to hurt people? I’d think they’d be on it just for the “you’re gonna pay less money” line, but racists gonna racist…
(It may just be my experience, but these types tend to be racist and that’s one of the driving factors, not paying for minorities)
i’m white as fuck and if they could only choose one minority to not be on their health plan, it’d be the disabled. has been said to my face, by someone who had been a friend before they moved to an extremely conservative locale, shortly after i had some semi-vital organs removed.
It’s not even racism. It’s just plain evil. There might be a bit of it, it was just not wanting anybody benefiting.
At first they rationalized it by saying is cheaper, but when they shared the costs it was brutal. They then said it was better and started ranting about how it’s actually not good either. It was a bit weird and he was kind of my boss so I didn’t want to push it.
This point is overdone, but Americans spend more than other developed countries on healthcare, so it’s not even an austerity thing.
I mean, it still counts as austerity when the money is coming out of your own pocket
I’m gonna need you to cite them sources boss, or I’m gonna assume you’re another liar spewing bullshit.
Appreciate you for the links!
Whoever down voted me, go back to your echo chamber where you can stay an ignorant dipshit that takes everything you see on the internet as factual.
Im just asking for citations to encourage spreading good information instead of AI generated hallucination trash and right-wing/cult/heresay nonsense.
Whoever down voted me, go back to your echo chamber where you can stay an ignorant dipshit that takes everything you see on the internet as factual.
this isn’t reddit. you can ask for sources politely or you can get downvotes. we like to encourage civility.
You’re being downvoted due to being aggressive for no reason.
If you don’t wanna be downvoted, maybe don’t be so aggressive when you ask for citations.
I’m gonna assume you’re another liar spewing bullshit.
is a bit antagonistic for “just asking”. A little civility will take you a long way.
"I’m going to aggressively call anyone talking about a widely known issue with American Healthcare a bullshit spewing liar!
Waaaah why am I being downvoted waaaah I fucking hate you socialists and your facts, you’re all ignorant dipshits even though you just proved I’m the ignorant one!"
As an American leftist, the above is the majority of my countrymen and it is fucking embarrassing and exhausting to live alongside them. It is incredibly frustrating how well our government has convinced the average person in this country to vehemently fight against their own wellbeing. The number of people I’ve come across who claim to be left politically but then call socialism the extreme right is just mind-boggling. It’s like they think other countries are just actual make believe and that the US is the only functional country on the planet
But then we wouldn’t be able to murder a bunch of random Venezualans or lose wars that we started against overwhelmingly inferior opponents.
It’s not either/or. I think even if we joined all the other modern countries in providing universal healthcare for all our citizens, we’d still be spending more on our bloated, unaudited military then the next countries combined, but feel free to fact check that.
excuse me it is audited regularly, just they fail every time.
edit: for anyone wondering, that’s worse.
In my 50s, I pay $25/week for private health insurance, that covers 100%, non urgent surgery in weeks, gourmet food etc. If I didn’t pay for private insurance it would be terrible - I might have to wait months for elected surgery, and the food would not be gourmet. It would still be 100% free though. I live in a first world country though, not USA.
The problem with US citizens and their bullshit world views are…it takes other countries 6+ months for surgeries (which I know isn’t true), but most, well most Republicans, in the US think you’ll be waiting 6 months for life saving surgeries and you die waiting for them overseas.
The stupid ass media and insurance lobby has prompt this up for decades. Republicans believe anything out of their propaganda circles. It’s sad af.
Its stupid because you still have the choice to get private healthcare if you prefer. So you can either wait for the public capacity, or pay your own way out of pocket / through insurance like in the states.
The other thing they gloss over is that it takes time here too. Unless you’re going to the ER, you’re often waiting months for an appointment.
I had to cancel a follow-up with my primary care doctor in September, and the next available time was this coming Monday.
A few years back, I needed a spinal injection to control my sciatica, my insurance company denied my pre-authorization, and I had to fight it. I eventually won 52 days after the initial request for the procedure, but they said I had to have the procedure within 60 days of the initial request. So the pre-auth expired and I had to go through the whole thing again. I spent nearly 4 months in so much pain I couldn’t put on pants some days trying to get that fucking injection.
And to add to the fun, the injection started wearing off in the last week or so, so I’m gonna have to do the whole thing again.
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)
Took two appeals and 7 months but I finally got UHC to cover a test. The final successful action was a screenshot from the plan brochure that showed that they needed to cover it…
Got laid off that job and now paying out of pocket for a much better plan and I’ve never been happier.
Just a cool $1800/mo.
What the fuck
New job doesn’t offer health insurance, so that’s the premium. However, I did manage to negotiate that they bump my offer to cover half of it, and the other half I can pay tax-free. So that’s something.
Plus I pay on credit card, so I get points.
and the rest of the economy is heading in this direction soon. Rent seeking needs to be outlawed
Let’s start with outlawing lobbying. That’s how you get started on getting rid of “rent seeking”.
Let’s start with ranked choice voting. Let third parties have a chance.
The problem with that is that some lobbying is good it’s just that the EFF for instance can’t compete with Google.
How abut outlawing that corporations can lobby? You have to be a non-profit and ran by people not affiliated with any corporations. CEO has to make a low threshold per year. We can work around that.
ran by people not affiliated with any corporations
i get what you mean, but i worked with a lot of corporation soles. usually single practitioner medical practices, for the primary purposes of: limiting liability and ease of sale (when the MD/DDS wants to retire). i’m not bothered by small business corps, since you have to register as a corporation (in the US) to be a charitable organization.
it’s just that the EFF for instance can’t compete with Google.
Exactly. Bad causes are so overrepresented in lobbying because lobbying as a concept is authoritarian, even if it can be occasionally used for good.
when this used to happen in the late 90’s early 00’s I would pay one, dispute the others and then ignore the calls. I visited one hospital, I get one bill. The rest are spam.
And then imagine having to pay another actor who wasn’t even in the movie, just because he came by to visit a buddy on the set one day.
