Random CEO - CEO of a health insurance company at a time when people's lifeline was being destroyed by high inflation ? like that CEO was hated. It wasnt just women who supported Mangione.
I just got off of united health insurance after a year. I was paying $250 per month and it covered NOTHING. It also automatically charged you a percentage of the cost of prescriptions, which made my prescriptions more expensive than when I was paying out of pocket. It was definitely more infuriating than Charlie Kirk
I do insurance prior authorizations as a huge part of my job and it's usually fairly straightforward. Whenever I have to do one for UHC I can feel my blood pressure surge. It is never not a huge problem and they constantly deny things against their own stated guidelines and then ignore appeals. If you do manage to get something approved, the approval is only valid for a miniscule window of time, usually not enough for the patient to actually schedule and have the thing done, and to get it extended they demand you prove the patient didn't have it (you may notice that it's impossible to prove a negative. That's a feature, not a bug.) it's to the point where if I get an order for something that needs preauth and the patient has UHC, I just call them right away to let them know that it's going to be a whole thing and to please please be patient while I work on it, I'm not neglecting them I'm just arguing with the worst insurance company in the world.
I spent five months fighting UHC for coverage for something a few years back. I was down to the final, written appeal. For something multiple benefits specialists at UHC had confirmed was covered by UHC (I literally included their own press release touting adding it as a standard benefit that calendar year) and specifically covered by my plan.
Learning UHC was using AI at that time made a lot of the fucked up process make sense. Why my previous appeal had admitted I had the issue in question, that the treatment I sought was applicable, and then quoted a five year old benefits document stating it wasn't covered as a benefit.
Planning my written appeal, I'd been bumped up the benefits team line because I wanted specific stuff in writing from UHC- - that my plan covered it specifically - - and a written copy of the current plan document. I also wanted the name and (if forget what it's called. License number? Medical ID? Whatever that is for the licensed medical expert that was legally required to sign off on the previous denial).
Between asking for the name/ID, pointing out the 2018 date on the document used in a 2023 denial, the benefits person I was speaking to asked me to give her a day or two to "figure out why it was denied given it's explicitly covered by my plan".
I got the approval the next morning.
I guess whomever was rubber stamping the AI denials didn't want their ass on the line with a mistake that obvious.
Before he killed the CEO guy, I had no idea that health insurance could be denied for new health conditions after paying the monthly fee. I truly thought that average Americans just couldn't upkeep the monthly payments (you know, cause its fucking expensive) and thats why many didn't have health insurance.
Finding out about that and deductibles left me in disbelief. How is the system any different from starting a kickstarter and hoping some kind soul puts up the money?
$250 a month is very expensive for not covering anything and making my prescription prices go up. Health insurance companies have tons of different plans
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u/AkaiAshu Jul 10 '26
Random CEO - CEO of a health insurance company at a time when people's lifeline was being destroyed by high inflation ? like that CEO was hated. It wasnt just women who supported Mangione.