Just so tired of almost every time a doctor submits stuff to insurance, we have to be the ones to make multiple phone calls to both the doctor’s office and insurance to iron everything out, figure out what the issue is (it’s always a different issue), and basically be the go-between for the office and insurance. What am I paying $500+/month for?! It’s like paying for the privilege of having an exhausting part-time job.
And yes, I understand that insurance wants to weasel out of paying anything, but this isn’t even shadiness, just straight up incompetence and lack of communication/following procedures. The amount of emotional energy we have to spend untangling this stuff leaves us drained.
Several decades ago in the USA, healthcare was affordable to working class people. It wasn’t cheap, but it was at least affordable to middle class people. It certainly wasn’t great even back then, because in my view healthcare is a basic human right. And poor people (especially minorities) had limited or no access. But even then, it was still better than the shit show we have today.
Anyway, what happened was some large corporations like IBM and others started offering an executive perk they called “major medical”. This was to help pay for expensive, unexpected medical expenses. It was a nice perk for the country club set. But like anything with money attached to it, some people got together and said, “Gentlemen, how can we weaponize this and take ALL the money?”
So, over time, it became the “standard practice” to tie your health insurance to your employer. This introduced a ton of friction into the system and created an entire ecosystem of rent-seekers who add no value to the patients or providers but charge a fee just because they exist.
Hmmh. I recently learned about that. Seems to be roughly 1980 (Reagan era?) when things started going really sideways and nowadays it’s just bad beyond words…
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_the_United_States
That graph is depressing and familiar. It’s insane how we think we’re “the greatest country” in the face of cold embarrassing facts.
That was the graph that opened my eyes a bit back in another discussion. I knew that people were dying in the States because they can’t afford insulin/medication/treatment. But I somehow thought they were at least paying less for healthcare and just poor and society didn’t care about people in need. But it’s way worse. They are dying 2 years earlier WHILE paying twice as much for healthcare. And ruined financially if anything happens to them or their loved ones.
And all of that is a scheme to rip off everyone. Sadly a quite successful scheme for decades already. I mean I’m really amazed by the extent. And I wonder if it were possible to adopt another style, give healthcare to everyone plus every citizen an additional $5.000 for free each year. I don’t really see that happening though. Every government in the past decades, no matter their color, has contributed to keep that graph going in this direction.
Edit: And I’d like to see that diagram for a few other countries. Not just against Europe, Japan, Australia, Israel and Korea.
A significant portion of our population is brainwashed into the idea that everything should be privatized for-profit. Even people who are profoundly harmed by this. They have been indoctrinated to despise and be revolted by socialized-anything.