(C) Common Dreams
This story was originally published by Common Dreams and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .
5 Horror Stories About Surprise Medical Bills and Private Health Care Insurance [1]
[]
Date: 2020-03-04 12:00:00+00:00
About 27.5 million Americans live without health insurance, leaving them vulnerable to high out-of-pocket costs for medical, dental, and vision care. But having insurance in our current system doesn’t mean you’ll avoid exorbitant fees—regardless of how high your premiums and copays are. Americans can pay upwards of $4,000 a year just for healthcare coverage, and, still, their insurance plans might not cover mental healthcare, dental, or life-saving surgeries that insurance companies deem “elective.” The cost isn’t just monetary—Americans who have private insurance spend an inordinate amount of time collecting documentation, submitting claims, following up on claims, and arguing with their insurance companies.
VICE asked people to tell us about their shocking, infuriating, and straight-up terrible experiences with their insurance companies to see how private coverage often works in the U.S..
Despite this, Vice President Joe Biden Biden thinks that Americans want to maintain their private insurance, proposing a plan similar to former candidate Mayor Pete Buttigieg’s " Medicare for All who want it ," but the private healthcare system remains a barrier to care for many Americans. That’s probably why the majority of Americans support Medicare for All .
Since the number of Americans with medical debt is far higher than the number of uninsured people in this country, we can see that private insurance plans—which we’re already paying for—are not protecting us against incurring high costs when we need procedures, prescriptions, or treatments.
I am insured through a PPO plan that most would consider “good insurance,” but I’ve been fighting my insurer for coverage of medically necessary mental healthcare for the past five months. (The issue I'm currently dealing with is after they’d refused to cover a registered dietitian to treat my eating disorder, forcing me to pay out of pocket.) This fight has cost me so much time and money. A lot of my debt comes from medical bills.
My husband and I flew to California to visit my parents and planned to drive their car back up with all my childhood belongings in it. As I was driving through Nevada, the car hit a patch of black ice and flipped over into a ravine. My spine broke on impact. (My husband was OK, aside from breaking his glasses.)
I was taken to a tiny hospital in Ely, where I was immediately pumped full of drugs and sent to get X-rays. Since the doctor couldn’t tell whether the break was stable or not from the X-rays, the doctor gave my shaken husband the choice of flying me to Salt Lake City or Las Vegas for an MRI, since the test, which would have been a four-hour drive. We flew to Las Vegas within an hour, where I had numerous tests done.
At some point in my morphine haze, a lady came through to explain my insurance while my husband was out getting new glasses. None of this registered because of the medication I was on.
[END]
---
[1] Url:
https://www.vice.com/en/article/xgq5jw/surprise-medical-bill-stories-and-private-health-care-insurance
Published and (C) by Common Dreams
Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 3.0..
via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/commondreams/
