Bad Case of PIISD: Private Insurance Induced Stress Disorder

[eridani]

AA psychiatrist diagnoses victims of health insurance

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/05/02-5?print

In July 2009, Carol A. Paris, a psychiatrist and an advocate for a single-payer national health care system, found herself on a speakers panel with Donna Smith of Aurora, Colo.

Smith and her husband, Larry, had been featured in the 2007 Michael Moore movie "Sicko." After Larry Smith was diagnosed with chronic coronary disease and Donna Smith contracted uterine cancer, they couldn't keep up with the costs of health insurance. They were forced to sell their home in South Dakota and move into the basement of a daughter's home in Colorado. Moore took them to Cuba for treatment.

"I heard her talk," Paris said, "and I thought, 'That's an amazing story.' I see patients every day being pushed around by the health insurance industry and that story just pissed me off."

The more she thought about it, the more she realized that people dealing with health insurers exhibit some of the same symptoms as patients with post-traumatic stress disorder.

[quaker bill]

1. You never know what they won't pay for

until you need them to pay for it. They sell you on it by telling you only what they will pay for. The limits are large but written in a very small font.

[tech3149]

2. I have a lot of problems with the medical system

but the health insurance industry knows only one thing. They can't make anything off you if you are healthy or dead.

[haele]

4. They make plenty off you when you're healthy - pocketing the premiums.

From both you and your employer, and then by denying you coverage when you need it. Aetna (medical and dental) makes over $14000 in premiums off me (for family coverage) and my company a year alone. Medco (the pharmacy coverage) makes about $2400, and VSP (optical coverage) makes about $1200. That's not counting what they make in the interest on whatever has come in ahead of the charges. If I had a reasonably healthy family with only an annual doctor's and dentists visits and no medication - like more than half the families out there - Aetna would be pocketing close to $10K of that $14K + they've collected off me. More than enough to cover the families that have chronic issues and high medical bills.

Big Pharma and the Medical Equipment companies are the ones that can't make any profit off you if you're healthy or dead.

Haele

[Maraya1969]

3. When is Obama Care going to kick in? Seems like it is taking forever!

[eridani]

5. 2014

And it isn't going to help much with insurers who deny claims either.