Someday when a doctor determines that I died of a long-term, undetected illness I want you all to know that it didn’t go undetected by me. I constantly have nagging aches and lingering signs of disease. My body is like the caution light on the dashboard of a 2005 jeep wrangler. Something is always dicked up, but every once in a while all the problems temporarily disappear before they come storming back stronger than before. Most recently I have been getting this sharp pain in my head between my left ear and my temple. It’s almost like someone is drilling a 1/4″ titanium bit through my skull. But it’s usually just like a 3 second burst of pain that only stops by once or twice a day.
The truth is, I would rather die of a medical issue than try to deal with the health insurance paperwork. Health insurance has to be the biggest scam in the world. Usually I’m half-joking writing these things, but I am 100% serious here. It’s pure fraud. Why in the ever living fuck is your employer involved in your healthcare? If you had a heart-attack while sitting at your work desk it wouldn’t qualify as a worker’s comp claim. So how is that any of their business? Imagine if your employer picked out your car insurance. “Hey guys, I just got a great rate with the gecko, so all 500 of us are going to make the jump from State Farm.”
This morning I did the closest thing to me going to the doctor within the past few years. I walked into a lab to take a covid antibody test. I literally lied on the paperwork. Said I didn’t have insurance. I’ll pay out of pocket I don’t give a shit. Charge me $1000 dollars upfront. That’s better than the insurance company periodically snail-mailing me disorganized packets of paperwork for the next 7 months. BILLED FOR $85,000. INSURANCE COVERS $83,748.68. YOU OWE $600.00. “Huh? That shit doesn’t even add up. Didn’t I already pay this fucking thing? Should I pay it again or do I dare call the toll-free number??”
How many times has that scenario I just made up above happened to you? Maybe I’m just unlucky. But I’ve never had the process go smoothly. One time I got an MRI and I shit you not it took me 11.5 months to sort out the bill. I bet I spent 50 hours in total on the phone with these people (mostly on hold). By the end of it I was straight up asking the service rep “Do you think we will get this resolved before the 1-year anniversary of my appointment?”
“Sir, you haven’t paid your balance with us yet.” Idk what to tell you man the insurance took it out of my deductible. So you’re out of your mind if you think I’m going to cut you a donation check. “Well we’re going to need you to provide proof of payment documentation.” Ok sure! Yeah I got that right here handy next to me at my work computer.
On one occasion I literally patched two phone lines together between my insurance company and the radiology company without asking them for permission. “Hey insurance guy, these people have sent me a Redwood tree worth of mail at this point why don’t you explain to them that we are all squared up.”
The funniest part of that story is that at the end of the year I got a check from my insurance company stating that I was OVERCHARGED for something. They mailed me a check for over $600 unprovoked. Came with a letter saying there was some sort of mixup between my deductible or coinsurance or something like that. I was in disbelief that they would even inform me. It’s not like I was going to read through my bank statements at the end of the year and add up my insurance charges to see if it equaled my deductible. Imagine how many times they have screwed up other people’s billing and just pocketed the difference. Some guy named Craig is probably sitting at his Highmark BCBS cubicle eating twinkies and fat-fingering your payment amounts right now.
Here is a comprehensive list of overly-complicated, unnecessary healthcare terms explained from the viewpoint of some corporate bigshot wearing a suit.
- Deductible
- Here’s how much money you have to give us until we will start helping you and even then we might not help you.
- Coinsurance
- Percentage of the bill we are responsible for after you meet the deductible. We’ll tell you it’s 80% or 100%, but in reality we will pay anywhere from 0% to 100%. Basically pull a number out of a hat when the bill shows up.
- Out-of-Pocket Maximum
- Here’s a number that is obscenely high. It’s straight up offensive. Once you hit this number we will finally stop letting you drown in debt. But until then good luck.
- Premium
- Pay us on a monthly basis for your company “provided” healthcare so that we can recoup the costs for those times where we actually decide to chip in on the bill.
- Copay
- If you use birth control or you get sick and need antibiotics or anything like that sometimes we will force you to pay for the pills. Again, whatever we say this number is, don’t expect the cashier at CVS to tell you a number that’s remotely similar. Refer back to the hat with the numbers in it.
- In-Network
- We like these guys. They bribe us to encourage you to see them.
- Out-of-Network
- Fuck these guys. If you try to go to one of these guys we’re going to charge you out the ass.
- Medicaid
- Free healthcare
- Medicare
- More free healthcare
- Obamacare
- No one knows. At this point we’re not even sure Obamacare was ever a thing because we have created so many hoops to jump through and so much red tape that even we are lost. If it was ever a thing, Trump probably spent a year repealing it so Joe Biden can come along and spend two years restoring it. Taxpayer dollars at work!
^ Check it out there’s the scumbag insurance agent shaking hands with your ceo. I’m getting legitimately triggered as I type this stuff out. I’m only one beer deep today (it was a pounder though). So I’m going to stop.
In conclusion, the entirety of the healthcare industry can collectively go F itself.