Humana screws Brandon Boyer for $100K worth of cancer bills - help him pay them

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God this shit just infuriates me.

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And people are still opposed to single-payer healthcare?

Seriously, fuck the US “healthcare” system. It’s the worst goddamn thing in the world.

It’s great that Brandon has raised so much money in such a short time (I guess he’s “lucky” that he’s well known), but the idea that in a civilized country this is the route you have to take when you get ill is absolutely disgusting - and if you don’t have a highish profile like Brandon you’d be utterly screwed.

I read this the other day, on a related note.

http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-cancer-medicine-20140224,0,4157578.story#axzz2vJG5aImz

The bit I took away from it was that the insurance company eventually offered the family a monthly premium of $11,000 for coverage, as opposed to the old premium of $5000.

Those are both ludicrous sums of money. Nobody except millionaires can afford prices like that.

All medical insurance companies need to die. Like right now.

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[quote=“daneel, post:3, topic:25064”]
All medical insurance companies need to die. Like right now.[/quote]
Corporations are PEOPLE my friend.

Why do you hate people?!?!

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This is yet another reason I refuse to sign up for the horrible and expensive healthcare options offered to me by the Affordable Care Act.

Nothing like paying $800 to $5000 in deductibles plus copay, plus monthly fees, and then having shit like this happen.

We really need to comprehensively fix the system, Not just give everyone shitty fucked up private insurance policies.

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Wait, confused here. According to this:

“Once you have insurance, the plan can’t refuse to cover treatment for pre-existing conditions. Coverage for your pre-existing conditions begins immediately.”

So, what loophole did he fall down? Was it that it was an unknown preexisting condition?

I’m very curious, as my g/f has Wolff-Parkinson-White, and she had insurance problems getting coverage for years. Now she signs up for ACA, gets Humana…and there’s a chance they can deny her…ug…

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That doesn’t make sense? Brandon states that this kind of thing is one of the things that the ACA prevents now. To use this as a reason to not sign up is like using the Huns as a reason to not ride a horse.

Aaaaanyhoo, it’s pretty evident from this and other things that one of the limits of a free market is life and limb, and the only way to make the powerful people realize that is to ask awkward questions and move into gerrymandered zones, is all.

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Insurance is just debt bondage rebranded so it’s legal. You pay out a bunch of money (and in the case of auto insurance are required by law to do it) under the premise of getting help when something goes wrong. But the insurance company is under no obligation to actually provide that help because all the loopholes they can exploit to deny payments.

The entire system probably needs to be made illegal before our health care system can see any improvement.

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Along the lines of @stefanjones comment… Corporate persons are opposed to single-payer healthcare along with biological-unit-people who swallow the Corporate persons’ FUD.

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For those wondering, yes, the rules have changed in the States, and medical insurance companies can no longer fuck over human beings in this most despicable of ways via the Health Insurance Marketplace. However, this only counts for cases starting after January 2014. Boyer’s diagnosis was in 2013, and as such, he’s left horrendously screwed

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Reading is great for answering questions.

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Yeah it’s doing a great job of preventing this.

The entire system needs to be reformed.

As long as health insurance is in the hands of private for profit corporations these things will continue to happen.

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https://twitter.com/humanahelp

social@humana.com

Hmmm, what to do, what to do?

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He fell down the loophole of getting an expensive disease, so they dropped him. That’s all there is to it. Obamacare would have saved him if he had the decency to wait a few months for it to kick in before getting sick.

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Normally when I see in a thread that someone else has shared the same thought I had, I’ll just scrap what would have been a redundant contribution to the conversation.

Collective rage, however, is defined by its redundant contributions. So here’s mine.

Exactly how many more stories like this does the American public need to read before there’s finally, finally a cultural shift towards the notion that supporting one another through systemic risk pooling is not a risk but a promise to both our individual and collective health? How many more, America? Are you getting it yet? Is it sinking in? Part of me wonders if, for those opposed to such a system, it’s going to take nothing short of a scenario like Brandon’s in their own lives to finally persuade them where their lack of empathy couldn’t.

This doesn’t have to happen and it will only increase our personal freedom if we establish a system that, by design, ensures that it won’t.

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As mentioned in TFA, the entire system was reformed. Your insurance company must now pay for treatments that happen from January on. You run up bills going forward, they will cover them. He is trying to get them to pay for treatments that happened in 2013.

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Ok, trying not to flame you, because your snark seriously warrants it.

Explain that paragraph. What part explains how he’s denied for pre-existing conditions?

He signed up with Humana. ACA covers pre-existing conditions. His condition existed previous to his insurance. Pre-existing = BEFORE you are covered.

Therefore, his sentence, “but it only covers anything from January 2014 on” is confusing: “it?” (policy covers? law covers?) “anything?” (health conditions? insurance policies?)

If you want to talk reading comprehension, I’m all for it, but cut the attitude. This is a serious case, and the facts of how he fell into this aren’t explained anywhere.

The only explanation I might be able to see is that last year (when ACA signups were going on, btw), he signed up PREVIOUS to ACA, and has an old policy, which somehow doesn’t cover pre-existing conditions. But nowhere here is that explained, and everyone is focusing on the ACA, as if this is a loophole in it.

People here are friggin dipshits. Americans by and large, especially the teabaggers and the libertarians and the like are just plain fucking stupid.
It’s unreal, really. They keep believing that we have “the best healthcare in the world”. If by best, they mean the worst of any “industrialized” nation. And we “should let the market decide”.
Assholes.

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Man, I don’t disagree, I just feel like there are accurate criticisms, and inaccurate criticisms, and the latter doesn’t do anyone any good.

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It almost certainly refers to treatments he had before January.

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