you pay your premium and get nothing for it
Thursday, 13 Mar 2025
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I wouldn’t mind the uselessness if it didn’t cost us anything. But we are paying 20% of our GDP for this monstrosity of inefficiency. 2-3x more per person then every other country on earth to be treated like this.
It’ll all be so much better after we repeal Obamacare.
/s
Any time we suggest universal healthcare they call us commies…
And believe it or not, it’s seriously about to get a whole lot worse
One of the benefits of being an engineer in the government is health insurance. You get substantially underpaid compared to the private sector, but your health insurance is top of the line. In the last 5 years, I have paid about $70k in premiums and copays and the insurance company has paid close to $1 million in bills.
similar story just happened to me.
i had a fucked up shoulder since college. tore my labrum multiple times doing god knows what, but i havnt been able to throw a football in 10 years. so i have a kid. i hurt my shoulder putting him into his carseat. i think ‘oh fuck if i cant pick up my son i am TOAST’. so i get get surgery – multiple locations of ‘frank’ tearing on the labrum. full repair suggest, approved, done, yay!
not so much. i tore the long head biceps tendon out of the repaired anchor. doc says ‘no big deal thats basically vestigial anyway’. i say ‘sounds like bullshit but i dont want surgery again’. so i wait. doesnt really ever get better. finally get an MRI a year post original surgery – the anchor that held the tendon i tore is poking out from the bone. basically a nail poking out of the deck that keeps snagging on everything. except everything is my rotator cuff. its destroying my shoulder.
so im gonna get surgery and fix it, right? wrong. insurance says ‘nope, not on our watch’. of course, its November and ive already hit my max out of pocket so no shit insurance isnt going to pay for anything. they denied again at the peer to peer. they denied AGAIN after appeal. only just this morning, after a month of fighting did they approve my surgery – at a different location 1.5hrs away because its cheaper than the one i was supposed to go to.
health insurance in this country is a fucking scam.
I had to cancel my kidney stone surgery because s it was $28000. Ended up filling out a bunch of paperwork with OHSU and got them to donate the surgery to me which was amazing, however having to wait 5 extra months to get surgery when I can barely move/walk and am forced to take pain pills because I can’t sleep due to the pain was not, how the young folks say, very “cash money”. Some good people in the healthcare industry are still out there but you REALLY have to look.
My work offers insurance to cover expenses health insurance does. Needing insurance for my insurance, makes my blood boil.
Republicans Paying obscene deductibles and monthly payments on top of chance of obtaining medical debt, plus a chance you won’t actually get care you need: 🤗🤗
Republicans when you have to pay less of your total income on healthcare but you’re guaranteed medical care (they hate the word taxes): 🤬🤬🤬
Again. Isn’t this the same-ish situation we had before ACA?
I was laid off in July, and when I looked at options to replace my already shitty corporate health insurance, I just didn’t get new insurance. I’ve had two doctor visits since then that I paid out of pocket for, and one small procedure that I cooked up a payment plan for with the doc. Cobra? Fuck that noise. If something serious happens, I’ll just die. I don’t really care.
The US has become a joke on so many levels. At least I still have my sense of humor, though. I’ll laugh all the way to hell!
I work at a business college and they had a guest speaker discussing ethics in business today. They were an expert in the medical insurance industry and they said:
**”we are getting ready to negotiate some new policies if the Affordable care act is removed. There is discussion that pre existing conditions are actually ethically on the patient. They have a responsibility to take care of themselves as much as we have one to fulfill our side of the bargain. We are actually pursuing a restructuring of what dental insurance could look like. After all, if you really think about it, having teeth is really a pre-existing condition.”**
I need to lose over 50% of my body weight. My doctor put me on wegovy. I’ve lost 25 lbs in 4 months. I’m paying out of pocket because my insurance won’t cover it. I mean at my weight and age it’s this or death. I’ve lost over 100 lbs before through diet and exercise but this makes making good choices so much easier. Sucks that some carriers pay for this life saving medication and others don’t. It clearly works but I guess insurance and big pharma can’t agree on a price so people have to do without or pay out of pocket because how dare we make insurance pay for needed medication.
I’ve not had health insurance and have done great. Self pay options at clinics and hospitals in my area have really generous discounts. For example had my last kids entire birth expenses be reduced from $23k to $2,800. So have that paid off and am putting $400/mo into a money market account until I need it.
I’d be all for our current healthcare system if it even attempted to be reasonably priced. It isn’t, so I want to use the threat of universal healthcare to force the industry to become exponentially better and if it doesn’t “woops, universal healthcare”
I have teamcare with UPS and everything is free and it costs $0 a month.
I had a referral to see a specialist. I went to see the specialist. I was then mailed a $500 bill for that specialist. It took TWO fucking months fighting the insurance mafia to get that shit corrected. In the meantime, I missed all the medical appointments in connection with the initial approved referral.
The death panels are here: They are the insurance mafia and they are here to extort money from anyone who dares get sick.
Average deductible are between $500-$2,000. If you don’t have the cash for this, you can always use a credit card or a payment plan to pay these off. Who would choose to go without a life altering surgery than payment plan. Talk about shooting your self in the foot.
Now they can swoop in and save the day. Medicare for all. US companies can take it off their balance sheets just like pensions.
Brian the MD pretending like he can’t believe how people can’t afford necessary medical treatment while not complaining about how he makes 300-900k a year.
How does he think himself and his staff of nurses, anesthesiologist, surgical assistants, sterile processing technicians gets paid? While the hospital also makes the necessary profit?
Either it’s the guys fault for cheaping out on his insurance choosing one with a deductible he can’t afford. Or Mr Brian MD and all the medical staff need a pay cut so they can be like all the other places in Europe and Canada with free to no cost healthcare where the doctors get paid the lowest rates in the world.
I’m as pro business as it gets, but health insurance needs burned to the ground. It’s absolutely unacceptable the way our health insurance system works. You pay, for years, and then the moment you need it its “oops sorry that procedure isn’t covered, go fuck yourself.”
This is an oversimplification but here’s how health insurance works: The insurer covers thousands of people. Some people use almost no healthcare in a given year, others fall off a roof or get cancer and use a lot of healthcare. If the total cost of all that healthcare averages $10,000/person, the insurer will tack on 20% and charge $12,000/person. Maybe they’ll charge $500/month and give you a $6,000 deductible. Maybe they’ll charge $1,000/month and cover everything, but at the end of the day, that’s what it costs. Their 20% goes to administration, profit and various bullshit like networks and prior authorization that attempts to keep overall costs down but which people hate, but that’s the most they’re allowed. 20% of total claims.
Exactly this. My insurance has a $5000 deductible. If I get cancer or hit by a bus, it will kick in and cover me. Otherwise I’m pretty much on my own. Insurance shouldn’t disincentivize people from seeking care.
My copay and out of pocket are low. Not everyone has bad insurance.
Let’s also make it illegal to NOT have insurance. And for your car too!
This is what people are talking about when they say they cant afford to live in answer to people who say the quality of life is so much higher now than ever before in history. Yes, we all have health insurance but we can’t afford to actually use it or the benefit it provides isn’t worth the money we spend on it.
The situation is not useful.
Would Healthcare be better if it wasn’t tied to the employers? He wouldn’t have picked this plan for himself of he had more choices.
Yeah, the insurance is just because you will be charged money if you dont have it. So either pay 800 a year for insurance you cant use, or get fined 900 a year for not having insurance
I refused a test at the allergy specialist today because I know I will just get charged $40 for it.
We’re stripped of everything and tossed away