Like many others, I've been reading a lot lately about the United HealthCare CEO who was gunned down in New York City yesterday. (Fun fact: I stayed at that Hilton hotel where the CEO was killed the last time I had to travel to NYC for work in 2020 before Covid hit!) I'm surprised the shooter hasn't been caught yet given the tremendous amount of security cameras in Manhattan. It's been more than 24 hours and that dude is still on the run!
Many people are using the CEO's murder to express their own complaints about the health insurance industry and its willingness to put profits over people. Count me in as one of the people on this bandwagon. I'm not a fan of vigliantism, but I am a fan of fairness and it's hard to feel sorry for someone who made millions of dollars a year while denying health coverage and needed procedures to ill people in order to save a few dollars and line his pockets and the pockets of other company executives.
As someone who has health insurance via my employer, I'm grateful for it. I have health problems, I'm not 22 years old, and I need to be able to go to a doctor and get prescriptions when needed. But it is frustrating when you have to adhere to such strict rules set by the insurance company: don't get your next mammogram even a day earlier than the one you got last year or no coverage, these medications aren't covered because the company doesn't deem them necessary, the company has denied a CT scan your doctor ordered because it's deemed too expensive, etc.
I'm grateful I have not had any serious issues with my health insurance. But, many years ago, I dealt with a situation where my mother's home had a fire and her insurer (Allstate) refused to pay to get the house repaired. My mother paid home owner's insurance for years without a claim and as soon as she had a claim, she was denied. The whole situation was ridiculous. My sister and I had to get an attorney and threaten to sue before Allstate got on the stick and paid up. To this day, I would never deal with Allstate. I wouldn't let them insure a dog house for me let alone a home, condo, co-op, car, whatever. This is the kind of stuff that gets my pressure up and these greedy insurance exceutives need to read the room. It shouldn't take a guy getting shot down in cold blood before the insurance industry realizes that something's wrong with the system. Sadly, the industry executives probably still won't see the light after this. One can hope, right?
No comments:
Post a Comment