Is this what happened w/ insurance and if so what's next?
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Anonymous
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I am old enough to remember when:
- a huge percentage of the country was totally uninsured - people were rejected from getting insurance due to pre-existing conditions - even when you had insurance, and paid premiums for years, the moment you needed it, insurance companies would scour your records to find something that could indicate there had been a pre-existing condition all along, then retroactively canceled your policy - if you lost your job, you were screwed - there were annual lifetime limits - your kid was uninsured the moment they graduated from college Then came Obamacare, and lots more people got access to insurance, and fewer were kicked off at the moment they needed it, and young people had a bit more grace to get their own plans. But it feels to me like among those who have insurance, denials of more routine claims have increased substantially (see United Health Care, but not just UHC), and it feels like everything -- copays, deductibles, etc., have gone up so substantially that *everyone's* feeling nickeled and dimed in a way that didn't used to be. My question: once we increased coverage, did insurance companies just start engaging in new shenanigans that made things harder for everyone? And if so, what is the solution (other than medicare for all, which I support, but which I suspect is still a ways off). |
Anonymous
| Everyon's premiums with employer based health insurance has doubled to tripled. I'm tired of paying for complete strangers. The whole HC system has been hijacked to an income redistribution scheme. |
Anonymous
I mean, that's kind of insurance, though. Most of the time, you are redistributing to others, and when you are the one who needs it, it will be redistributed to you. "I didn't have an automobile accident or fire this year, so why should I pay my premiums" kind of undermines the whole idea. I agree that people's premiums have doubled or tripled to more, and the whole thing feels like it's in a state of near-collapse, because unless a person is exceptionally wealthy, they are feeling tremendous strain. But isn't insurance by definition redistribution? |
Anonymous
Income has been redistributed to HC execs. I’m tired of paying their salaries. |
Anonymous
| Insurance, in general, has always been a scam. The way out is single-payer care, but we're not getting that anytime soon. |
Anonymous
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There have been mandates to cover certain procedures or therapies that keep adding to the cost of providing insurance.
For example, insurance now has to pay for autism behavioral therapy that some kids are getting 10 hours a week which can be $60,000 a year and some kids are getting 20 hours or more a week or more. Why should insurance pay for that? If your child has a similar disability that isn't labeled autism it isn't covered. You know what surprisingly isn't a mandate? Hearing aids for children or adults. That seems so ridiculous that a child with mild autism can gets 20 hours of therapy delivered in their house but a child with a hearing loss can't get a hearing aid or speech therapy covered. There are other examples like this that drive up the cost of health insurance for everyone. Insurance companies want to make money so limit anything that is mandated. |
Anonymous
| There's also a tremendous amount of patent abuse. This includes not just patenting every part of the manufacturing process (I see you, insulin manufacturers) to make it impossible for others to enter the market. There are also companies that *could* develop therapies that get paid considerable $$ not to, so that an existing drug manufacturer can continue to have a monopoly -- that sort of pay-not-to-play should absolutely be illegal. |
Anonymous
| Pricing needs to be clearer at hospitals, labs, dentists, etc. You should know without asking before getting a service what the price is--not just your co-pay--but the actual cost. Clarity about what money goes where--whether to the facility, the doctor, the insurance company, the pbm, etc--should be much less of a mystery. |
Anonymous
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Not only are healthcare execs getting way overpaid, many are doing a bad job.
GEHA (part of United Healthcare) just did a major system "upgrade" that's been a disaster. If you have GEHA and use an out-of-network service, be warned that all your EOBs beginning with 2025 will presume that you haven't paid yet (even though out-of-network providers require payment upfront) and will include a "discount" that is what the discount they think would be nice for the provider to give you even though they have no relationship with the provider to negotiate that. When they send your EPB to FSAFeds, you end up not getting reimbursed for the non-existent "discount" because the EOB indicates you got a discount even though you actually paid it. So not only are they not paying anything for the service, they are obstructing you getting paid out the right amount of your own dollars from your FSA account. |
Anonymous
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As someone with a pre-existing condition, I am so thankful for the ACA.
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Anonymous
Requiring single men to buy health insurance coverage that covers maternity and obstetric care. Total redistribution scheme. All individual and small employer insurance plans, including those you get through the Marketplace, must cover maternity and newborn care. Ridiculous. |
Anonymous
| I’m a skall biz owner. ACA is the best thing that has happened to small biz owners. |
Anonymous
Single men have to pay for maternity/newborn care but they’re guaranteed the following: ambulatory patient services emergency services hospitalization mental health and substance use disorder services including behavioral health treatment prescription drugs rehabilitative and habilitative services & devices laboratory services preventive and wellness services and chronic disease management |
Anonymous
Mothers of newborns aren't the ones who are mostly getting DUI tickets, getting into stupid boating accidents, flipping cars at the highest rate, using a gun to "commit suicide" but missing or chickening out, jumping off heights, getting into skydiving accidents, and on and non and on. Can we opt out of paying for the literally catastrophic costs of male behavior from 15-35 years old? Thanks in advance. |
Anonymous
Meanwhile you're also subsidizing the health insurance of all those federal employees...until Trump fires them anyway. |