#literally fuck united healthcare and also fuck anyone who doesn't believe that what united healthcare does is industrial scale murder

[thatswhatsushesaid]

back in 2013 i was on the cusp of developing pancreatitis unless i had my gallbladder removed. literally if i did not have this very routine surgery, i would also probably have continued to get sicker, and sicker, and sicker, until i also died. ultimately, after a lot of back and forth between my provider at the time (BCBS, which was a private plan i could not afford to pay for on my own, at $300 a month [which did not cover vision, prescriptions, or dental]) and my surgeon, they did did deign to cover about 2/3 of the cost of the surgery. but i still was on the hook for about $7k USD for a procedure that took under an hour and which did not even include an overnight hospital stay. (the trauma from the hours i spent in post-op recovery is a post for another time, but i'm going to carry that shit with me for the rest of my life.)

i don't live in the US anymore, and my doctors in my new country of residence have a LOT more power when it comes to pushing back against my supplemental insurance. still, i feel that spike of bone-deep anxiety any time my doctors recommend a new procedure or medication, and i probably always will. and it's because of shit like this.

To put into perspective my feelings on the United Healthcare CEO story, I'm gonna tell you a super fun story.

Around six years ago I was dying of organ failure.

Like, full on organs-shutting-down-couldn't-eat-anything-for-weeks-could-hardly-function organ failure. I had surgery scheduled to help reverse some of this. Hope was on the horizon. I was going to live. I was going to be okay. I just needed to get to my surgery date.

And then the day before that surgery I got a call.

"We've been fighting with your insurance company for weeks," said the lady on phone. "They keep telling us your procedure isn't 'medically necessary'. Dr. [Surgeon] screamed at them for a half an hour yesterday...but they still refuse to cover it."

I was given a choice during that conversation: go ahead with the surgery anyway and be on the hook for tens of thousands of dollars...or don't get the surgery...and almost certainly die.

I'm sure you can guess which one I chose.

I'm sure you can also guess what the name of my insurance company was at the time.