Health Insurance Doesn’t Prevent Medical Bankruptcy
A sobering statement I found in the Austin Statesman:
Most people who file for bankruptcy because of medical bills are middle class, according to Baumer and others. The Harvard study, published by the journal Health Affairs, said three-fourths of those who filed had insurance at the onset of their illness.
Even so, co-pays, premiums and prescription expenses can overwhelm a patient or family, said Dr. David Himmelstein, a co-author of the study and an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. Serious illness can also lead to job loss, and with it can go the health insurance, he said.
That doesn’t quite match the reality I’m writing from (I’m thankfully employed at a good job; it’s my wife who’s disable). I can’t help but wonder how many other folks are struggling because a health insurer has reneged on its promise to pay the medical bills.
The article also makes a passing reference to one other unpleasant reality my wife and I became acquainted with in the wake of her disability:
Ann Davis, who also is uninsured, worked three jobs while her husband tried to get on disability and a government-financed health insurance program to cover a liver transplant.
In my wife’s case, it wasn’t until a few days after the fifth anniversary of the incident that caused her to be disabled that she received her first SSDI check and Medicare card.
When the financial planners emphasize the need to build up an emergency fund (and to purchase long-term disability coverage), in case you have to be on your own, without income, without insurance, after a disability…they aren’t kidding!
Tags: Bankruptcy, Social Security Disability
DNA Testing and the Fear of the Health Insurers
I realize that this site is titled “Aetna Sucks”, but part of what I’m hoping to do here is to highlight some of the ways that America’s health care system is truly effed up.
The health care market is one in which patients are afraid of being screwed over by their insurers, patients are afraid of what their doctors might disclose to the insurance companies, and health insurance underwriters seek to find any reason to get off a high risk.
Consider, for example, a story which appeared in Sunday’s New York Times on the subject of DNA testing:
The first, much-anticipated benefits of personalized medicine are being lost or diluted for many Americans who are too afraid that genetic information may be used against them to take advantage of its growing availability.
In some cases, doctors say, patients who could make more informed health care decisions if they learned whether they had inherited an elevated risk of diseases like breast and colon cancer refuse to do so because of the potentially dire economic consequences.
Others enter a kind of genetic underground, spending hundreds or thousands of dollars of their own money for DNA tests that an insurer would otherwise cover, so as to avoid scrutiny. Those who do find out they are likely or certain to develop a particular genetic condition often beg doctors not to mention it in their records.
Tags: DNA Testing
Hartford Protest Against Aetna
I’m still playing with some of the "behind the scenes" work on getting the site up and appropriately indexed. However, while I fiddle, and in lieu of earth-shattering new content… A couple of weeks ago, CT News Junkie reported on a small protest outside Aetna’s home office in Hartford, to "celebrate" the announcement of a very profitable 2007 for Aetna. They posted this video, for those of us who couldn’t make it:
Tags: Aetna, Hartford, Protest
Coming Soon….
This site is still under construction.
However, please watch this space for the story of my adventures in resolving a claim dispute with Aetna, and other associated rants.
And, of course, it goes without saying that this is a personal website. In no way shape or form is it associated or affiliated with Aetna or its subsidiaries.
Tags: Meta