Health Insurance Sends Letter to Baby Denying Coverage: "You Are Drinking From a Bottle"
In an editorial for the Washington Post, Kaiser Family Foundation senior contributing editor Elizabeth Rosenthal described the problem of insurance claim denials in the starkest terms: by providing examples of real letters people had gotten denying them and their loved ones coverage.
One such letter, sent directly to a newborn baby, was so absurd that if it weren't real and published in WaPo we would think it was satire.
"You are drinking from a bottle," read the denial for the infant's fourth day in the neonatal ICU ward. "You are breathing on your own."
"If only the baby could read," Rosenthal quipped, to devastating effect.
https://futurism.com/neoscope/health-insurance-denial-baby
World's Greatest Healthcare hard at work.
Skittles
(158,153 posts)it really is quite inhumane....try to imagine the thinking that goes along with this kind of behavior from insurance companies
ck4829
(35,714 posts)Someone actually, actually, typed "You are drinking from a bottle" addressed directly to a newborn baby, they folded that paper, placed it an envelope, mailed it, and received a salary for that.
If the subject wasn't "American healthcare", this would sound like something you'd see in some dystopian or surrealist fiction.
Auggie
(31,764 posts)mopinko
(71,597 posts)ck4829
(35,714 posts)DBoon
(22,987 posts)You have a program that reads in patient information, selects an applicable denial reason, prints out and mails the letter.
No human intervention required.
Insurance companies are far too cheap to have humans type out these sort of things.
rubbersole
(8,337 posts)Damn takers...
woodsprite
(12,169 posts)They put it in writing and told my onco verbally that I had a recurrence of endometrial cancer after 15 yrs, I had treatment, Ive had all my female organs removed and a bowel resection, no need to follow up with a PET scan to follow a slightly enlarged inoperable lymph node that showed up on a CAT scan with contrast to determine if it was a spread or just reactive.
Thank goodness he and my uro collaborated and came up with a way to monitor me by continuing and getting approval for quarterly CAT scans with contrast, which showed more detail. AND thankful that it was a reactive node and has continued to shrink.
(Sorry for the poorly formed run-on sentence. Thats what happens before coffee. )
ShepKat
(411 posts)is my husband's cousin. Amazing person. The book, "An American Sickness: How Healthcare Became Big Business and How You Can Take It Back" is an eye opener
redstatebluegirl
(12,458 posts)They rushed him in and immediately started an IV and pushed a pain med through the IV. We found out it was a large kidney stone.
Two weeks later we get the EOB from Cigna saying they would not pay for the IV questioning it's necessity. They did however pay for the iv push drugs.
Now, if you have kidney stones the push fluids to try and help it pass. Still arguing this $1500 charge.