oh, Jon, don't get me started. I don't know whether you were on Medicare, Medicate plus supplement, or Medicare Advantage, but your experience is a-typical. I am on UHC's Medicare Advantage plan, for various reasons, but find them simply unacceptable and horrible in processing claims. I am waiting now for a claim filed months ago; no word from the company. The intake person for inquiring is clearly operating from a tight list of what she can to, so simply repeats over and over the official line. It is frustrating beyond imagination. USC is the largest and, I am guessing, one of the worst offenders in claim denial and delay. And they are the biggest provider in the US. We have the worst medical system in the industrialized world - worse outcomes and highest costs. The lobbying power of big Pharma, big insurer, big medical center/hospitals has warped our system beyond repair and recovery. National health is the only answer - yes, there, too, choices must be made, but they are not like the cruel, profiteering, piratical system we have. The frustration is national, everywhere. When I talk to professionals in the system, they all acknowledge that the system is broken and morally bankrupt. As much as I find the killing of the CEO a horror, and it is, it reflects a public fed up with this jerry-built, Rube Goldberg, fractured, profiteering mess that is American health care. I don't think Trump will deal with it; the Democrats don't have the courage to call for single payer national health; they didn't when Obama ducked on that option; they don't today. Big Health has bought and paid for their silence.
Thanks, Abby. FWIW, I entered the funhouse with just a top Blue Shield plan from CBS, my wife's employer, and graduated to Medicare and a Blue Shield supplemental about halfway through my treatment. I surely do recognize my good fortune. I had run-of-the-mill (but aggressive) cancer, and I suppose actuaries behind the scenes predetermined that paying for chemo and surgery would be less expensive than the cost of treating me for every issue that would arise as the cancer ate me from the inside and cost a lot more to treat. It was simply less expensive for them to stay in front of the disease.
Regardless, I'm sorry you're having such problems with them. My prayer is stay out of the grey areas.
oh, Jon, don't get me started. I don't know whether you were on Medicare, Medicate plus supplement, or Medicare Advantage, but your experience is a-typical. I am on UHC's Medicare Advantage plan, for various reasons, but find them simply unacceptable and horrible in processing claims. I am waiting now for a claim filed months ago; no word from the company. The intake person for inquiring is clearly operating from a tight list of what she can to, so simply repeats over and over the official line. It is frustrating beyond imagination. USC is the largest and, I am guessing, one of the worst offenders in claim denial and delay. And they are the biggest provider in the US. We have the worst medical system in the industrialized world - worse outcomes and highest costs. The lobbying power of big Pharma, big insurer, big medical center/hospitals has warped our system beyond repair and recovery. National health is the only answer - yes, there, too, choices must be made, but they are not like the cruel, profiteering, piratical system we have. The frustration is national, everywhere. When I talk to professionals in the system, they all acknowledge that the system is broken and morally bankrupt. As much as I find the killing of the CEO a horror, and it is, it reflects a public fed up with this jerry-built, Rube Goldberg, fractured, profiteering mess that is American health care. I don't think Trump will deal with it; the Democrats don't have the courage to call for single payer national health; they didn't when Obama ducked on that option; they don't today. Big Health has bought and paid for their silence.
Thanks, Abby. FWIW, I entered the funhouse with just a top Blue Shield plan from CBS, my wife's employer, and graduated to Medicare and a Blue Shield supplemental about halfway through my treatment. I surely do recognize my good fortune. I had run-of-the-mill (but aggressive) cancer, and I suppose actuaries behind the scenes predetermined that paying for chemo and surgery would be less expensive than the cost of treating me for every issue that would arise as the cancer ate me from the inside and cost a lot more to treat. It was simply less expensive for them to stay in front of the disease.
Regardless, I'm sorry you're having such problems with them. My prayer is stay out of the grey areas.