Oh, look! A graph about how often for-profit companies are denying people access to services that are considered basic rights in most parts of the developed world!

I’m not surprised… my work has UHC, and every year they cancel our current plan and force work to get a new one. Then every year around april they deny me for my annual doctor’s visit because they have in their system that I have a different primary insurance. And every year I have to call them and be like “who do you show as my 2nd insurance?” and they are always like “uh… no one… but we have marked you have one.” and every year I have to tell them, no, we don’t have 2nd insurance, just you, and then call the doctor’s office back and let them know, then wait a month for the doctor’s office to confirm they received payment and I’m no longer on the hook for the bill. Last year I had to do it twice, once for my medical and once for my daughter’s dental plan. They also aren’t even economic… they denied one of my medications, because they only cover the name brand that has a higher co-pay for me instead of the generic. They aren’t even saving money on it unless they are getting a giant kickback from the manufacturer. The without insurance price of the generic to me would have been like $50, but the without insurance for the name brand they want me to take is over $1500. And instead of me paying the $20 copay for the T2 medication and them paying $30, I pay $30 for the T3 medication and they pay $1470. So if they aren’t getting some massive kickbacks from the name brand, they are way worse off in this arrangement and it took me several hours on the phone, and multiple escalations, just to get someone who could tell me why I was denied coverage for my prescribed medication in the first place… Then I had to play phone tag with my doctor’s office to explain to them the issue and get them to change the prescription since they used the word “generic” in the RX and the Walgreens couldn’t fulfill a non-generic with that RX… If I had a choice, work would switch to a different company the next time they cancel our plan on us, but I’m a mushroom at work. (Kept in the dark and fed bullshit).

Note that Kaiser, Blue Cross Blue Shield, and Caresource are nonprofit. Also, integrated care organizations like Kaiser usually have lower denial rates in large part because the actual treating provider/doctor is an employee of the insurer, so there’s not going to be that tug of war between a fee for service provider wanting to make money on a treatment versus an insurance provider trying to deny coverage on that treatment.

Personally, I think integrated care is better, and this is one of the reasons, but I also think this particular statistic isn’t an apples to apples comparison between insurers.

The funniest part of this is the “battle lines” being drawn on differing perspectives.

Usually it’s a culture war thing. Liberals say X, conservatives say Y. Vice versa also happens. Big sweeping statements are made over relatively minor events.

This time the best indicator of what someone thinks of this is how establishment they are. NPR and Fox News are both reporting this as a tragedy. Meanwhile basically every single culture war influencer under the sun is just like “yeah talk shit get hit LMAO”.

In real life, I have friends who aren’t celebrating this. Again the demarcation isn’t political, but philosophical. My friends who are inclined to follow the rules no matter what disapprove, and everyone else finds it sort of morbidly funny. Even then the disapproval is sort of a milequost “even if he had it coming, extrajudicial killing isn’t okay”.

Police are still at work on establishing a motive.

“The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose.” - James Baldwin

My dream is creating a nonprofit healthcare insurance where money are actually used to save people’s lives instead of inflating shareholders’ pockets. It’s good to have dreams sometimes.

What a fucking dystopia you guys have to live in. Every dead (ceo) of such a horrible anti-people-company is no tragedy but self-defense. Everyone who works at such a thing. Whoever puts a bit of moneyz over ethics.

Insurance companies pretend to be in business to cover health costs, but they’re actually in business NOT to.

United seems like they just take money and don’t actually insure anything! 🤔

I’m curious about the industry average. It seems that the majority of the larger providers deny far more than the industry average. The numbers don’t seem to work unless the bulk of the industry is smaller providers that are not showing on this graph. I may be wildly misinterpreting this. Anyone have any insight here?

They have red line to go buy it now

This isn’t accurate.

They’ve made $ 359 Billion dollars profit in 2023 alone, increasing their revenue threefold since 2010. 80% of their revenue is from insurance premiums so clearly they’re over-charging and/or not covering as many claims as they should on a HUGE scale. This is pure exploitation and abuse.

When you exploit your customers like that in health insurance, it not only ruins lives, but also kills people. They can make all the mental gymnastics as they want, but the actions they’ve taken to increase their profits are literally killing people.

With 53 million customers, the number of people whose lives were ruined or lost by this blatant scam is in the millions. It was only a matter of time they’d end up pissing off a vengeful enough person.

If I were running Medica, I would retire and bribe my way into witness protection.

Or maybe I would Scrooge / Grinch Christmas morning my ass as hard as possible.

There’s a lot more people hurting out there. We need to do a lot better. Specifically, billionares and private oligopoly CEOs need to do a lot better. Past generations understood that. This guy paid with his life for not understanding it.

I hate victim blaming, but I can’t honestly call this asshole the victim in all this. The victims were a bunch of kids and parents and siblings whose names we will never hear in the news.