Even if you have insurance, it might not help. If you end up in a hospital that’s not in the network your insurance covers, or the doctor you see in the ER isn’t in the network, even if the hospital is, you can still get stung for insane costs.
The US healthcare insurance racket doesn’t need to be better regulated, or reformed, it needs to die painfully in a fire and never come back ever again. It simply should not exist at all. I am utterly disgusted by the whole stinking system. I cannot believe that anyone who wasn’t being bribed up to the eyeballs by the industry would ever accept it.
Oh I know! I was with a friend in LA when she thought she was having a heart attack, one trip to the ER, an ECG, and lots of xanax later (long story)… her work-sponsored travel insurance denied her claims. She worked for a travel agency too. Its crazy.
My BF laughs when I stock the RV with gravol and immodium and pain killers and muscle relaxants and sudafed and anti-inflammatories before we go on US road trips. (And ironically enough, he’s usually the only one that uses my stash of pills!) But I don’t want to be caught out trying to get a prescription in the 'States for stuff I can get OTC at home! (WHY can’t I get Robax OTC in the US? WHY!?)
That’s what I think. This story (and yes, I read the Guardian and the NY Daily Something, which the Guardian linked its story) seems awfully incomplete. And I hate that! I thought I heard one of the TV news people say something about a family feud? I didn’t hear the whole thing so I’m not sure if the feud (if there is one) was before the suit or after.
Good to know! They all used to get BlueCross and it did not cover all the things (especially now knowing that 20/50 of the most expensive hospitals are in Florida!)
The funny thing is that insurance companies are often for tort reform. They constantly lobby state and federal elected officials on the premise that they are being severely damaged by individuals (and their attorneys) who are greedily going after easy money from their deep pockets.
Thank you for all this (and @ActionAbe, too). Sometimes I get frustrated by the lack of reporting OR questionable editing that leaves out some important details (facts).
By the way, I HATE insurance companies. They are so much like Las Vegas; the odds are ALWAYS in their favor. Unfortunately, we all have to have one or two in our back pocket.
The real secret of $127K is: it’s almost the minimum that any tort lawyer would be willing to take the case to sue for. S/he is taking a third of the settlement ($42k) as payment, which is not a lot for a case that eats up many hours of lawyer-time.
In that case, she should have just bought a lottery ticket, since she seems to be able to tell the future (she sued a year before the kid’s mom, who was not her sister, died). You might want to go back through the comments here to find out about the facts of the case that you missed.
The wrist-sustaining-hors-d’oeuvres argument usually makes boffo box; at least she’s giving him a win in court. From a jury. So the amazement is there, if not the salamander tickle or neckborne triple-lutz HR departments always end up giving me.
That quote she made about the hor’s, she can’t have said that seriously, right? Certainly she could manufacture a worse sentence than the one quoted, but it’s already so bad I find the whole story hard to believe.
That certainly sounds bad, out of context (especially in a story that is already leaving out enough facts to make the outrage factor as high as possible)… But if the context is “My injury is so bad, that I can’t even hold something as small as a tiny hors d’ouvres plate without pain”, suddenly it’s not quite the same thing, and a bit harder to be all internet-judgy about it.
Well you’re going to feel like a bunch of jackasses: this is the only way to make insurance pay in Connecticut. It’s illegal to directly sue the insurance company for the damages to her hand, so either A> She’s got to pay some big medical bills all herself…or B> she sues her nephew and the insurance company needs to pay then
