Abandoned America

When my wife signed us up for health care through the state she was off by one day on my birthday. For the last year my life has been an absolute nightmare of people saying they fixed it but (surprise!) they didn't, getting insurance reimbursements & referrals bounced bc of the wrong date, having to spend hours on the phone trying to get it corrected so I'm not billed full amt at every single provider (surprise! It's never fixed!)

US health care makes Kafka's bureaucracies look simple & easy

Mar 20, 2023 at 5:12pmMastodon for Android
Show threadAbandoned AmericaMar 20, 2023
I'm arguably in control of my intellectual faculties but I still am at my wits end with it. I cannot imagine this level of overall inability to fix something as simple as a date off by one day, baked into a byzantine network of garbage medical records/billing software, being any easier to manage if someone is severely injured, ill, or impaired. And I suspect that's the point. Make getting the insurance you paid for so time consuming & impossible that you just give up & eat the debt yourself
Show threadAbandoned AmericaMar 20, 2023
Healthcare in the United States is really going to rock when the provider phone tree dumps you into a AI chatbot that doesn't understand what you're saying and gives you incorrect/useless info for hours and there's no way to talk to a human because they fired all but one real person who is now split between 8 companies
Show threadJakeQuokkaMCMMar 20, 2023
@AbandonedAmerica Medibot: "Hey I had that too!" .... then goes completely offline silent.
Show threadDogzillaMar 20, 2023
@AbandonedAmerica Yes, but we can build personal chatbots to deal with phone trees and insurance company chatbots
Show threadhapbtMar 20, 2023
@AbandonedAmerica this already happened so letโ€™s just hope the speech recognition gets better after a few more trillion dollars are spent
Show threadtbsMar 21, 2023
@AbandonedAmerica Pretty much nailed it ๐ŸŽฏ
Show threadAbandoned AmericaMar 21, 2023
@tbs Thanks!
Show threadAnne JeffersonMar 20, 2023
@AbandonedAmerica Lots and lots of sympathy. At a former job, HR messed up the birthdate of a friend's child and then denied the labor and delivery costs as having occurred several days before the baby's birthday. Then several years later, they did the same thing to me! Can't pay for NICU if the baby hasn't been born. :o
Show threadAbandoned AmericaMar 20, 2023
@annejefferson oh no! That's really criminal. People should actually literally go to jail for that. It's theft
Show threadAnne JeffersonMar 20, 2023
@AbandonedAmerica In both cases it eventually got straightened out - and I hope your situation does too. Still incredibly frustrating - and time consuming - to deal with!
Show threadCoach Pฤแน‡ini ยฎMar 20, 2023
@AbandonedAmerica ๐Ÿ’ฏ
Show threadOlavMar 20, 2023
@AbandonedAmerica
We have Kaiser which is inclusive (everything in-house) which helps a lot for that sort of thing. But you still sometimes have to fight for care, especially 2nd opinions
Show threadbrennenMar 20, 2023
@AbandonedAmerica a couple of times now i've had to navigate the vagaries of US medical billing in the aftermath of an event which caused me some months of lingering cognitive impairment. the mind boggles at the sheer villainy and incompetence baked, in equal measure, into a system that has to be dealt with by people experiencing the worst parts of their lives. just a complete disaster, makes me want to light things on fire.
Show threadAbandoned AmericaMar 20, 2023
@brennen well said. And that's exactly it: incompetence, villainy, and apathy. It does inspire a very special sort of rage
Show threadBrandonMar 20, 2023

@AbandonedAmerica received a 3k bill for my wife after insurance denied it. She looked at it and said โ€œI bet they accidentally submitted it to the dental department listed on the same cardโ€. Sure enough she was right and I almost paid 3k that insurance was responsible for.

She called and the response was โ€œlol oops weโ€™ll try againโ€. How is that acceptable? If she wasnโ€™t there and recognized the billing codes Iโ€™d have paid the thing.

Show threadAbandoned AmericaMar 20, 2023
@Brandon yuuuup. Funny how the mistakes are always in their favor too.
Show threadA. RiveraMar 20, 2023
@AbandonedAmerica I hear you on that because yea, having to deal with health insurance is a byzantine pain in the ass that makes Vogons seem positively pleasant and efficient.
Show threadBrandonMar 20, 2023
@AbandonedAmerica also that scene from The Incredibles where the boss chews him out b/c his clients are mysteriously โ€œpenetrating the bureaucracyโ€ in getting the bills paid.
Show threadAbandoned AmericaMar 20, 2023
@Brandon I forgot about that. Yes, that was clever
Show threadStan Wonn ๐Ÿณ๏ธโ€๐ŸŒˆ ๐ŸŒนMar 20, 2023
@AbandonedAmerica Honestly, the US healthcare system is just horrible from the billing/insurance side. I have experience with single-payer systems (VA for me and my now-husband used to be on Medicaid) and frankly itโ€™s a relief not having to deal with all that crap! Thatโ€™s why I am a big supporter of #medicare4all.
Show threadAbandoned AmericaMar 20, 2023
@StanWonn I am too. Doubt we'll ever get it at the rate we're going but it is both the moral and logical choice
Show threadHasufinMar 20, 2023
@AbandonedAmerica Allow me to remove all doubt - it is DEFINITELY designed to make you give up and eat the debt. That is an explicit policy in medical billing, right up there with billing more to people who have less money (as they also lack the resources to fight the bills).
Show threadAbandoned AmericaMar 20, 2023
@Hasufin man I love this country. That's what it's all about, right there. The poisonous blackened heart of the United States
Show threadHasufinMar 20, 2023
@AbandonedAmerica Yeah. I was working helpdesk at a hospital and talked with the guy who used to handle billing.
I legit don't know why health insurance C-levels are alive.
Show threadGreg StolzeMar 20, 2023
@AbandonedAmerica
I have long felt that much in that area feels like a compromise between people who genuinely want to help, and people who want to erase the very idea of "help."
Show threadAbandoned AmericaMar 20, 2023
@GregStolze I worked in mental health for like a decade and that's very much how it was there. And the good people tend to leave when they're able.
Show threadJimmothy BagginsMar 20, 2023
@AbandonedAmerica you can say the integrity of the Healthcare system is as empty and in disrepair as the photos you post
Show threadMary Ann HornMar 20, 2023
@AbandonedAmerica . Yep. I did that once.
Show threadSiderea, Sibylla BostoniensisMar 20, 2023

@AbandonedAmerica

They don't do this sort of thing deliberately, but they absolutely profit off it - they not only have no incentive to fix faults in their computer systems that result in things like it being hard-to-impossible to fix birth dates (somewhere an insurance company software project manager is saying "Why would we ever need the DoB field to be editable? People's birthdays don't change. Go ahead and make it part of a multifield foreign key.") they actually have a financial incentive to leave such errors in.

Oh the stories I could tell you. Insurance company IT is utterly awful, because every bug is a profit center.

Show threadNathan A. StineMar 20, 2023
@AbandonedAmerica it's not that there is an inability to fix it, it's just that the problem doesn't negatively affect the company in anything but a trivial sense, so they have no incentive to fix it across as many systems as they would need to.
Show threadAbandoned AmericaMar 20, 2023
@stinerman I'm going one step further to point out they actively benefit from that problem, which is super scuzzy. So they make it worse.
Show threadCoprolite9000Mar 20, 2023

@AbandonedAmerica
When I moved to the US, someone unknown made a typo and got my date of birth a whole decade out for my health insurance - which was ... fun.

(That too took ages to finally get fixed. You have my absolute sympathy.)

Show threadAbandoned AmericaMar 20, 2023
@coprolite9000 I can definitely sympathize. It should be such an easy fix but no, no it is not.
Show threadSuecrisMar 20, 2023
@AbandonedAmerica Ugh. Once one of my health care providers wrote the date on my chart in the European style (day first, then month) and my health insurance company decided to pretend this meant my condition was pre-existing, and they refused to cover anything from that point on. It took 9 months to get them to cover the surgery that had already taken place. I'm still bitter.
Show threadAbandoned AmericaMar 20, 2023
@NoTwit and I'm totally sure they didn't make it that difficult because they could save money doing so. No sir ๐Ÿ™„
Show threadGreenDotGuyMar 20, 2023

@AbandonedAmerica A car dealer mixed up 'buyer' and 'seller' on a title for my car once. Super obviously a mistake. It took three days off work and some good old-fashioned bribery to 'fix'. But then a few years later it broke down and I left the car with another dealer, and he spent days calling the DMV. At one point, he threatened to sue me because he had to store my old dead car for months while it was in legal limbo.

This place is an ID Management disaster.

Show threadGreenDotGuyMar 20, 2023
@AbandonedAmerica another person I know issued all their student loans in their grandparent's name. Nobody bothered to check that the undergraduate loans were issued to an 80 year-old or that an eighteen year-old showed up for class. Their parents were handling finances for both student and Grandpa, so he never even knew, but in death, be erased $60K of debt.
Show threadAbandoned AmericaMar 20, 2023
@DarcMoughty wow, that second one sure has a happy ending at least (RIP grandpa, though)
Show threadJennyJayblesMar 20, 2023
@AbandonedAmerica I am sorry. I work in healthcare and the system is a complete train wreck horror show. It is really hard to stay alive and healthy in the US. I just wanted to say I have your book The Age of Consequences. It is really a beautiful book!
Show threadAbandoned AmericaMar 20, 2023
@JennyJaybles thank you so much on both counts, I hope you enjoy it! I am sure that the state of health insurance makes providers absolutely bonkers too so you have my sympathy also
Show threadFritz AdalisMar 20, 2023
@AbandonedAmerica
The healthcare industry uses birth date as an authenticator.
Show threadAbandoned AmericaMar 20, 2023
@FritzAdalis I am very much aware of that fact, having dealt with this issue for a year
Show threadFritz AdalisMar 20, 2023
@AbandonedAmerica
Sorry, I know you realize that, just complaining/commiserating.
Show threadAbandoned AmericaMar 20, 2023
@FritzAdalis oh, I got that, no offense taken. My reply to you was meant to be accompanied by a long sigh.
Show threadKingOfHeartsMar 20, 2023

@AbandonedAmerica

Would probably be easier just to change your birthday

Show threadAbandoned AmericaMar 20, 2023
@Pablo that thought has occurred to me many times
Show threadDavie DuckMar 20, 2023
@AbandonedAmerica Yes...I just have a secret smile when my Italian friends complain about the healthcare system there.
Show threadAbandoned AmericaMar 20, 2023
@wackyIdeas honestly it's hard to imagine a system worse than using bureaucracy as a cudgel to beat people into the poorhouse
Show threadIf This Goes On (Don't Panic)Mar 20, 2023
@[email protected]'s intentional. I know folks who've done training for health insurance companies for over 20 years and they still don't understand it. If they can't, how can anyone else?
Show threadNorman WilsonMar 20, 2023
@AbandonedAmerica American exceptionalism!
Show threadAbandoned AmericaMar 20, 2023
@oclsc yes: there's an exception to every health insurance claim that allows them to disqualify it
Show threadLazarou Monkey Terror ๐Ÿš€๐Ÿ’™๐ŸŒˆMar 20, 2023
@AbandonedAmerica Tories to the UK Population
"And that's what we have planned for YOU"
Show threadAbandoned AmericaMar 20, 2023
@Lazarou yup ๐Ÿ˜‘
Show threadZZ BottomMar 20, 2023
@AbandonedAmerica  
Show threadPatMar 20, 2023
@AbandonedAmerica I work in medical billing and I know exactly what you are talking about. Is a nightmare. My heart goes out to you.
Show threadAbandoned AmericaMar 20, 2023
@patrascan thank you, and I am sure the fact that you care means that you really are a help to the people you deal with โค๏ธ