Wow. This means that now, someone can say that medical bills literally cost them an arm & a leg.
I have a friend who has a prosthetic. Sure they could live their life in a wheelchair. But this guy goes hiking, and acts like a fully capable walking person. The quality of life is huge. It really gives back their life.
They are saying it’s not “medically necessary” to have any quality of life. As long as you’re breathing, you’re A-okay in their book.
This is what insurance in the US has come to mean.
Like how they still consider dental care to be “cosmetic.” They’ll rip them out of your head free of charge, but putting new ones in? No sir… You can eat mush!
But God forbid anyone mentions a solution that includes socialized healthcare…
Yep. It’s absolutely insane they wouldn’t cover it.
It’s honestly unethical as shit.
I mean it’s not really. They don’t cover hearing aids or even implant surgery. “Not necessary” is what my sister gets told. Yeah, trying living deaf you asshats!
It’s absolutely insane that people should be expected to either buy insurance or pay for medical care out of their own pocket. And the insurance is never enough.
Won’t somebody thinking about the profiteers?
Those guys can go to hell
Unethical and counterproductive. Having a prosthetic limb would almost invariably lead to a less sedentary lifestyle, which is strongly correlated with better health. Paying for a prosthetic today has to be cheaper than paying for a heart attack or diabeties later.
You’re making the assumption that they’ll pay out for a heart attack or diabetes later. You just said that they were caused by the pre-existing condition of not having a prosthetic limb.
What makes you think they will pay for heart surgery or diabetes later.
Yes, but who cares about later if there are quarterly and yearly profits to get.
Depends on how you measure productivity. The hope is that by the time long term care is required for things like diabetes or heart disease, the patient would be eligible for Medicare.
That or the sedimentary lifestyle will so negatively affect the more than likely diabetic patient, that they go into renal failure and qualify for disability through social security. Effectively removing their cost onto a socialized network.
Paying for a prosthetic is much cheaper in the long run, but not for private insurance. The vast majority of the cost of not providing a prosthetic will be absorbed by Medicare.
But being unwell is profitable
From a purely “medical necessity” viewpoint even, having a properly-functioning prosthetic helps him keep the rest of his body healthy! (Although I suppose they’d figure on denying claims for hospital treatment when his unhealthy heart caved in!)
(Although I suppose they’d figure on denying claims for hospital treatment when his unhealthy heart caved in!)
The long term goal of this type of policy is to not only reduce immediate cost, but to offload the cost of long term care onto a socialized network like social security.
The majority of amputees are already diabetics, if you remove their ability to remain active and mobile, you substantially increase the chance of renal failure. Patients who require dialysis because of renal failure get enrolled for disability through social security.
I thought this was an Onion headline
Someone needs to play super Mario bros again.
Okay, I can spell out the “medical necessity” for you insurance companies in a way you’ll understand: mental health is important for physical health. You do things to improve mental health and you also improve physical health. So if you improve someone’s mental health now, you won’t be paying out for all of the later physical problems brought on by the stress and the knowledge that their life would be better if only some more miserly than Scrooge insurance company would let them have a fucking leg.
And having a prosthetic limb is important for physical health anyways. Helps you be more active, massively increases productivity (that’s what capitalists want right?), decreases wheelchair/caregiver costs, etc.
It’s simply an all around win.
Excellent points. The increased physical activity part would also save these idiot insurance companies money, but they would have to think beyond the next quarter.
Insurance companies push obvious lies to intentionally defraud the public. That’s their entire buisness model. That’s why your doctor had to fight through dozens of automatic rejections sent by the insurance company, they fully intend to lie in order to avoid making payments they agreed too when signing you up for insurance. A just society would be putting these people in federal prisons.
You can make a perfectly serviceable peg leg with an old broom handle. Ask your insurance company for a free how-to brochure!
Your health insurance corporation would charge you $50 for that brochure.
That was good enough for Ahab, and he was able to captain a commercial ship using his! Back in the good old days nobody expected insurance to cover ordinary everyday whale attacks. Those were “acts of God” just like everything else.
And then throw out your back or fall and break a hip because of the unnatural motion required to walk with said broomstick.
Noooo heckin’ killing CEOs is violent and bad
Then this fucking headline pops up.
They’re basically crippling people, who could have at least some kind of limb use, by denying them limbs that THEY ALREADY PAID FOR AS PART OF INSURANCE PAYMENTS.
This is exactly the type of shit that radicalizes people into violent action.
Violence is NEVER the answer! Can you imagine how horrible it would be if some degenerate insurance needer walked into a board meeting and pewpew’d all the poor shareholders? Who would make the hard decisions and demands that costs be dramatically cut and value dramatically increased? What if some horrible psychopath threw a maltov into an executive office? Or some villainous cloak and dagger type of scum rigged car bombs in some poor wealthy persons gated drive way? What would we do then! We’d live in terror of extracting value out of a system that is ment to provide service instead of just freely taking that value without consequences! Can’t you even image how bad that would be! Think of the CEOs people!
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I get the anger, and there’s no direct threat of violence, so I’m leaving it up.
It’s almost like they’re trying to force people to be violent. I don’t get it.
I’ve been in corporations being driven unto the ground to extract as much money as humanly possible in the shortest amount of time. They are sociopaths, they are physically incapable of stopping. They want ALL the money and they want it NOW. They can not help themselves, and they won’t stop unless they are forced to stop by regulations, you know, in a well regulated capitalist society that puts limits on greed that costs people’s lives or happiness on an undue scale. If you don’t have those regulations… we’ll that’s how you get a forced reset of the country by people who can’t manage to swallow that much bullshit
Maybe you’re being a little unreasonable. Have you stopped to think about what the money might want? Maybe your money wants to be with the CEO without partaking in some nasty exchange of goods or services.
The money wants to be with the CEOs and thus have the chance to be spent on private jet rentals and lavish vacations in exotic places with influential people. It wants the chance to be spent on expensive tuition at old-money, name-brand universities and third and fourth homes in the country and on post-apocalypse survival compounds in expensive, English-speaking island nations. If you were a dollar, wouldn’t you want this too? Or would you want to spend your days going in and out of tills at Walmart and Dollar General or forked over to some prole delivery driver as a tip, a driver who’ll just spend you on fuel or fries at some greasy drive-up. Money wants to be free, free to live the good life, and to live it with the people who care about it more than anything else under the sun.
Or would you want to spend your days going in and out of tills at Walmart and Dollar General or forked over to some prole delivery driver as a tip, a driver who’ll just spend you on fuel or fries at some greasy drive-up.
Holy shit, this part reminds me of constantly being taught to not give cash to homeless people because they’ll only spend it on alcohol or drugs.
My mom recently saw me give $2 to a man at an intersection. It was a relatively cool day for this part of Texas at that time of year: mid-90s. She admonished me going on about how that guy was going to spend it on booze or drugs. I told her that very few people are homeless by choice and that he was just a guy trying to survive one more hot day. If my $2 bought him a bottle of water or a drug-assisted escape from reality, then it’s still making his day $2 better. Then I asked her how much drugs she thought $2 could purchase.
You think a CEO has ever been beaten near death with a broken prosthetic limb? Just asking maybe that’s a thing.
This just feeds into my disillusionment with science and technology. What is the point of having developed these incredible things to then not go and use them. I just have to spell it out now. What. The. Fuck. You know I was born into a modern age but looks like im going to die in the dark ages.
I’m not clear on the issue, in this case, with science and technology. Seems to me to be a problem with societies not caring for all their people.
That’s capitalism
It has to do with the motivation of folks to expand the limits of science and technology. Many folks who do that stuff genuinely are looking to improve life for all mankind.
Science and technology become magic, accessible only by the Fair Folk while we toil away in the dirt.
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It’s not a Sci/Tech issue.
It’s a dystopian capitalism issue. When products that don’t have adequate profit margin and volume to make notable contributions to the bottom line, or worse yet, negativley affect the bottom line in a high per-unit cost, they are a liability. Profits direct research, too, unfortunately.
Humanity, quality of life, and all that medical shit is secondary or even further down the priority list for the corporations thinking about their profits first and the “service” last.
Capitalism is not the issue in this case. I’m certain that prostetics have adequate profit margins. It’s a lucrative business.
The issue here is that the insurance company just doesn’t want to pay for it.
It’s the insurance company that doesn’t have an adequate profit margin without screwing their customers over.
Capitalism is not the issue? Yet everything you just said the reason is for adequate profit margin is indeed capitalism.
Capitalism drives the health insurance company too. Greedy investors fund the health insurance decisions. All insurance companies, actually, with the possible exception of mutuals.
The issue here is that the insurance company just doesn’t want to pay for it.
That’s part of capitalism, too.
That’s just greed. I hate capitalism as much as anyone else here, but there’s no need to pin plain theft on any -ism.
That’s capitalism. That’s all it is.
Profit margin for who…? They already have your premium payments so actually covering your care gives them nothing, as far as they’re concerned you can do one. That’s why claim denial is the primary role of an insurance provider and all of its metrics, not coverage, the goal is to keep as much of your money as possible.
In capitalism, EVERYTHING only exists for profit. If there isn’t money to be drained, it’s tossed to the landfill
Including science.
We research profitable fields and defund unprofitable ones.
Burn it all to the ground
Luigi was right all along
I wonder if someone cut off the CEO’s limbs, would the medical necessity of prosthetic limbs would be questioned?
That’s not how it works. The CEO is so wealthy that the insurance companies treat them for free because of all the business they bring in from enrolling their workers.
We don’t hear stories about the soft privileges of being in a position of power very often but they tend to be immense. We’re just not in the club so we would never know.
It’s almost as if someone recently gave a heads up on how the public feels about health insurance companies… and they chose to implement this anyway 🤔
Line must go up. They probably see themselves as brave by continuing to follow Friedman’s shareholder logic in the face of these events.
You know, maybe we should force healthcare CEOs to be insured with the lowest tier of their own insurance.
Kinda misses the point because they have their own money to pay for whatever treatments they want, even if their company regularly denies them to clients. Buying insurance is gambling against the house, just health insurance has that extra bit where the insurance companies somehow have a say in what treatments they’ll cover.
That’s why the rich don’t gaf about ruining public services. They can still just hire someone to do it for them and if the government isn’t providing the service for everyone else, they’ll also need to hire someone to do those things, meaning some capitalist can set up a business to profit from the need the government no longer meets.
True. I almost forgot you can pay with your own money. When you dont have any disposable income, you don’t even consider that some people can afford to pay for things out of insurance.
Like some kind of new saw movie lol
