313
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 07 Nov 2023
313 points (99.4% liked)
politics
19082 readers
3524 users here now
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.
Example:
- Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive.
- Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Is this supposed to be a feel-good story of the little guy working within the system?
It feels like a capitalist dystopia where health insurance will tell everyone else to go die in a ditch.
No. The story admits that early on. It's yet another expose on how crooked the system is so that even one of the elite have to fight to get the treatment that their doctor recommends.
Orphan Crushing Machine
Good news everyone
That's pretty much what insurance does these days. Too bad we're not all top trial lawyers.
Top trial lawyers with personal doctors who are willing to invest tons of their own time into your case. Personal doctors who also happen to be experts on the technology in question.
Overcoming this type of abuse is utterly impossible for the average person, as the patient himself acknowledges.
Yeah, the article even describes it as a Goliath vs Goliath story. Good for him I guess, but the rest of us are still fucked. My wife has skin cancer and her dermatologist recommended some tests to see if there were better treatments available and if our kids would be at a higher risk. The insurance denied it. Yay America?
It's called an Orphan Crushing Machine story. As in, "how nice it is that the whole community came together to raise money to stop little orphan Annie from being tossed into the orphan crushing machine!". Stories that don't bother to ask the important questions like "Why is there an orphan-crushing machine?" and "Why on earth did they all have to raise money to pay someone to stop an orphan from being tossed into said machine?!"
Once you learn to recognize them, you realize it's what 99% of 'feel good' news stories really are.
But this one is a lot more sensitive to that narrative than most, so I'd still recommend the read.
I'd argue that is ProPublica, so generally very far from the kind of media outlet that would publish feel good stories, and that the story itself isn't even a feel good story: even the rich, powerful attorney with the powerful lawyer friend and the powerful doctor friend had to pay for the treatment out of his own pocket, and the story ends with the insurance company, after losing the car, still only paying a fraction of that after having dragged out the entire case for years and years.
And the only people who can fight it are the powerful and elite, who, it just so happens, won’t even consider doing so until the problem impacts them.
"Hello yes I'm your insurance agent, now before I read this decision to you, are you now or were you ever a lawyer? No? Okay denied get fucked L + ratio."
My first thought was oh is that supposed to make me feel better that he had to be a bigshot lawyer to be able to get healthcare?