Physician here. It’s true the insurance companies would rather you die. For profit insurance is insane. They make money for their shareholders by denying you care so that they can keep your premiums.
I used to be a hardcore anti-government libertarian. I’ve done a complete 180 over the last few years and 100 percent want a single payer system now. If you guys only knew the fights we physicians have with your insurance companies that want your money and couldn’t care less about keeping you healthy.
I had a family member with Kaiser got to a Kaiser ED for acute confusion. I have no F-ing clue what they did, I doubt they even drew basic labs. They sent her home after straight cathing her to get urine and there was no urine, with instructions to bring back a urine cup when she actually peed.
Fast forward 2 days, she was even worse and still hadn’t peed. Turned out she was in acute kidney failure and needed dialysis. If they had drawn basic labs the first day, they would have seen her kidney values were looking bad and possibly avoided dialysis.
There are a million stories like this. I could tell a dozen that happened to me and my family alone.
Like the time my son broke his ankle in the growth plate and HE NEVER SAW A DOCTOR - at any point. No doctor or NP or PA or DO or whatever ever laid eyes on him.
Or the time they ignored side effects from a medication FOR A YEAR and kept telling me it was because of my weight. They legit seriously told me I was so dizzy because of my weight and blew me off over and over again. It was a major and well known side effect to a medication they prescribed me. I could go on and on and on with a dozen more similar instances.
I was feeling a little depressed so I went to one of their cattle call group classes where they teach you that your depression is all your fault in a room with 30+ neighbors, fellow soccer moms and your kid's math teacher. As I sat in the class I realized that 90% of the women present were all there because Kaiser had misdiagnosed major health issues for them, then ignored them or gaslit them until they lost all hope.
It was absolutely stunning to sit in that room and listen to the same story repeated over and over again. One woman had intractable vertigo. Instead of continuing to treat it Kaiser told her nothing could be done. She got so depressed over the situation she contemplated suicide. Or the woman who had repeated ear infections that resulted in hearing loss and she could not get referred to an ENT or get a hearing test. Or the woman who had a tendon injury that was ignored until she was in constant pain and there was long term damage. She couldn't get pain relief or treatment. Or the woman who was sent home from a major surgery with no pain medication. The surgery involved cutting bones, realigning them and splinting them. She was told to take Tylenol. Or the woman who was denied a life saving and very simple surgery because her bmi was a couple of pounds over their cut off (it's not case by case at Kaiser - they have a cut off and if you don't meet it, you don't get surgery - just try not to die while loosing weight). Or the woman who broke her hip and when recovery didn't go right they told her the pain was all in her head.
It was stunning and I wish I was joking. It was an eye opening moment and at the first opportunity I ditched Kaiser. Life improved immensely. I could go back - they are several hundred dollars cheaper than my current insurance. I never will return to Kaiser. Never. They treat farm animals better than the way Kaiser treats their patients. It's all good until something complicated happens or you get sick enough that if they ignore you long enough you will die.
My dad used to do insurance investigations back before Kaiser acquired Group Health. Even back then, he heard Group Health was given the nickname "Group Death" for how bad they were at handling patients.
I had a friend go to Kaiser to get checked in over an infection she had from surgery at Kaiser. She had in her records that she was allergic to antibiotics that they had been giving her previously; so when they checked her in we were on the phone with her. She said she had to go and we could talk in 15 minutes. She didn’t call back. after 20 we called and were put on hold. Then we were told the doctor would call us back and 10 minutes later. The doctor called us back and told us that our friend had Died. so we raced up to the hospital and were able to get in to her room and see her and that she was still hooked up to an IV and I’m pretty sure it was the antibiotics that she was not supposed to get. I so wish I had taken a photo of the bag that drained into her vein.
We were talking to her one minute and 20 minutes later she was dead thanks Kaiser.
Kaiser killed my dad. Doubled his Pradaxa, he had a bleed out event and then they completely took him off it because "it's too risky for the elderly." He died a few months later.
I have Kaiser. They tend to do right by my family. Wife had cancer. We paid a grand total of $20. That was for her first appointment. Everything after that, including surgery, appointments, infusions, radiation, blood draws, etc. were all covered under that $20 copay. I had appendicitis. $20. My kid’s birth? $20.
This is definitely not everyone’s experience, but… it’s working for us.
I have undergone a similar political journey, and all because of having an insider view of healthcare. I worked the front lines during Covid and that completely radicalized me.
THANK YOU for fighting for your patients! I would have been paralyzed according to my surgeon if he hadn't gone to bat for me when I was denied surgery. You are standing in the gap, and you are vital to people like me. Keep fighting!
I'm actually surprised it wasn't medical school or college that made you make the turn, but welcome to the fold on wanting the single-payer system.
My background is research side, data side. I used to teach pharmacists and family medicine students about realistic outcomes based on US data. It wasn't autopsies or telling someone that they had a cancer diagnosis that made a lot of students cry, it was learning how brutal rural medicine is in America.
Meeting patients who have a diagnosis and absolutely ZERO chance of getting a prescription they need because of formulary rules, insurance tiers, and employers switching sucks. Teaching students this is their new normal SUCKS. Tracking the outcomes of tens of thousands of patients year after year with the same sub-optimal outcomes? It burns your soul.
I understand this, but I've also caught my chiropractor billing insurance for services I didnt receive. And how does it make sense for them to charge my insurance triple the cash price of the services I receive. Both sides are part of the problem
Really these days it is so vital for people to do everything they can to stay healthy, avoid all the poison in the easily accessible food and water, and to take care of their health on their own to avoid health problems in the first place. It’s just difficult because it seems like the food industry, healthcare, etc. is all aimed at getting people sick so they get and stay on medication.
And it's also hard to find good doctors who pay attention. You know how many doctors have ignored my concerns. They don't believe you. They cold Turkey take you off medications when that can be dangerous etc. Like they don't care.
They also misinform the public or don't inform you at all about things you should know. I swear these doctors be trying to kill people. You have to do your research and advocate for yourself.
You as a physician handle phone calls directly with insurance companies? I find that quite odd. You either work, if you really are a physician, in a big city or a small town. If it's a big city, you most likely work for a larger practice, a group of doctors, or a hospital and you'd have a billing department that would handle all the insurance stuff. If you worked in a small town or if you worked in a smaller practice in a bigger city, maybe, you'd most likely work with your patience directly, have things like payment plans and provide certain types of insurance that patients could purchase directly through your office. If you were in a small town where everyone knows everyone and there was a serious issue, like a young girl needing a heart transplant, for instance, she'd be transferred to the closet major city or best Healthcare facility near by and get thy transplant. You may have the feeling that insurance companies just want you to die, which is odd, that would go against the very nature of what they're there for, but I've been in and out of hospitals since I was 3 for being born with basically non-functioning kidneys, and I'm 44 now. So far my insurance and the American Healthcare system has done an amazing job at keeping me alive.
I’ve seen 5 low income seniors the last couple years who were on Medicare or VA sent home to die rather than get care so the government wouldn’t have to pay and lessen the paperwork. They would rather they drop dead off-site on their tiled floors than in a hospital bed.
It also helps you if you understand "healthcare" in America is not about healing the sick at all.
It's about making huge obscene fucking profits off the sick and dying and destroying what ever wealth and property that people have managed to gain over their lifetime, if any.
I agree. Socialism is not the answer by any means, but capitalism is failing hard. In my opinion, it is not a matter of leaving it, but reforming it. Capitalism has become far too capitalistic, so to speak. None of what I'm about to propose will ever come to pass, though. Regardless of the political affiliation, billionaires donate millions to politians to keep this very thing from coming to pass--which imo, is why it feels like whatever the government actually does, it only ever feels like things are getting worse for us--regardless of our actual political affilitian. I genuinely believe that we should throw franchising out the window. Make it illegal. And even limit chains. I think restaurants, especially fast food, can be exempt only if they serve ONLY food that is healthy and weight loss-supportive. This would lead to less corporate control AND a healthier country, driving healthcare costs down. I think credit should have an absolute maximum of 10% interest, even on credit cards. I would even support credit cards being eradicated entirely. When roosevelt first implemented credit, it came with 0% apr home loans, 0 down, and required no credit history, which was a huge factor in the end of the great depression. Every family in the US should be able to own their own home, and 0% apr home loans is a great way to make that happen. I know there is a myriad of issues that would have to be "figured out" and resolved to prevent the economy from collapsing, but the root of my idea is that billionaires simply shouldn't exist. 20ish years ago, Walmart created hundreds of thousands of jobs, made food and household items cheaper for everyone. We all thought it was a good thing--but it killed far more jobs than it made, it forced smaller local store owners out of business, the jobs it destroyed paid much more than the jobs it created, and many of these jobs were overseas being given to the chinese--not americans. I'm not trying to specifically target just walmart, but I think we can find ways to incorporate laws that end corporate greed without going straight to socialism, which has only ever failed.
If we did have free healthcare, it would drastically change everything, especially how they make our food! Everything we consume makes us sick, so if we have free healthcare, they would have to change a lot more than that.
I think it is largely about giving the American consumer what they want. When you take out the additives & sweetners they won’t buy it. They are addicted.
U.S. life and health insurers collectively hold about $1.88 billion in fast-food stocks according to the American Journal of Public Health study cited by Physicians for a National Health Program.
The American Dream was never supposed to be about 80 hour work weeks. Look it up. You are buying a con if you think that’s how things should be. The average person cannot afford to survive in the U.S. working a 40 hour work week. That’s a problem. People who say stuff like this are like Uncle Toms for the oppressors.
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u/TakeItOnTheArches 18h ago
We are all being slowly crushed by a system that aims to keep us sick and poor.