For many years, patients in the U.S. health care system have become frustrated by bureaucracy they don’t understand.
Doctors are included in the insurance company’s network for one year but not the following year. Getting someone on the phone to help can be impossible. Coverage for care and prescriptions is often denied informally.
This week’s fatal shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson unleashed a wave of public emotion — indignation, anger, resentment and helplessness — from Americans sharing personal stories of interactions with insurance companies, often viewed as giant corporations. Unidentified.
In particular, the words written on the ammunition found at the scene of the shooting — “delay,” “denial,” and “deposit,” echoing a phrase used to describe how insurance companies dodge demanding payments — amplified voices that had long She criticized the industry.
“Suddenly, my fire was lit up again,” Tim Anderson said, describing how his wife, Mary, had to deal with being denied coverage by UnitedHealthcare before she died of Lou Gehrig’s disease, or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, in 2022.
Anderson said they couldn’t get coverage of the machines that help his wife breathe or speak — and in the end, she was communicating by blinking when he showed her the photos. He said the family had to rely on donations from a local amyotrophic lateral sclerosis group.
“The business model of insurance is not to pay,” said Anderson, 67, of Centreville, Ohio.
“When Mary was still able to talk, she told me to keep fighting this,” he added. “It must be exposed.”
For Anderson and others, Thompson’s death and the letter left at the scene created an opportunity to vent their frustrations. Conversations at dinner tables, office water coolers, social gatherings and on social media have centered around the topic, as police efforts to find the gunman keep the case in the news.
Hans Marstella said he understands why the chatter is mounting. The 54-year-old California caregiver was taken to comment on Facebook about UnitedHealthcare’s reputation for denying coverage. He said that as a Catholic, he mourns Thompson’s death and feels for his family, especially with the holidays approaching.
Get weekly health news
Get the latest medical news and health information delivered to you every Sunday.
But he sees frustration with insurance companies even among his clients, most of whom are wealthy seniors who are not protected from high out-of-pocket costs.
“And then, you know the CEO of this company is paying a lot of money to get $10 million a year, and you’re not going to have a lot of sympathy for the guy,” Maristella said, citing Thompson’s compensation package that included base salary and salary. It included basic salary and base salary. Stock options. “Health care is a business, as I understand it, but the obsession with share price, and profit, has to be reevaluated.”
University of Pennsylvania researcher Michael Anne Kyle said she was not surprised by the growth in talk about insurance companies.
“People often struggle with this themselves, and when you see someone else talking about it, it might prompt you to join the conversation,” she said.
Kyle studies how patients get care, and said she’s been frustrated with building the system for years. Costs are rising, and insurers are using more controls like prior authorizations and physician networks to manage them. Patients are often caught in the middle of disputes between doctors and insurance companies.
“Patients already spend a lot of money on health care, but they still face problems with service,” she said.
Insurers often notice that most of the money they bring in goes out the door paying claims, and they try to contain high costs and overuse of some care.
In Ohio, Anderson said his initial reaction to the CEO firing was to wonder if it was related to denials of coverage, like the one he experienced with his wife.
He added: “I certainly do not approve of killing people.” “But I read it and said, ‘I wonder if someone has a spouse who was denied coverage.’”
It’s something Will Flanary, a Portland-based ophthalmologist and comedian with a large social media following, saw a lot online in the immediate aftermath of the shooting and found very telling.
“It’s zero empathy,” he said. “The lesson to be drawn from this is not: ‘Let’s shame people because they are celebrating a murder.’ No, it is: ‘Look at how angry people are at this system that exploits people and do something to try to fix that.’”
Published under the name Dr. Glaucomfleken, Flanary’s content began as jokes about an ophthalmologist and a way to deal with his own experiences with two cancer diagnoses and a sudden cardiac arrest. But it has evolved, featuring skits with attention-grabbing characters that poke fun at the decisions of major health insurance companies, including UnitedHealthcare.
He said he’s never seen conversations about health insurance policies take off the way they did this week — and he hopes these new voices will help bring about change.
“I always talk about how powerful social media is for advocacy, because it’s really the only way to put as much pressure on these companies that are doing bad things to patients,” he said.
& Edition 2024 The Canadian Press
