health insurance BS

[Glides]

my new provider actively refuses to tell me what im in network for, despite having spent the past three days experiencing migratory pain moving around my arms, shoulders, neck, chest, back and stomach. nowhere above the neck or below the waist. i switched insurance providers through COBRA on the second day of this and the new one is just nonfunctional. i keep being told to go to urgent care or the ER, but i got covid the last time i went and was treated so abusively i don't ever want to go back. so i have no idea what to do, because at this point, even if i wanted to go to urgent care or the ER, i literally can't go without being forced into thousands of dollars in medical debt. i have no idea if this is something benign or worse, everybody refuses to help me, i have no idea what this pain is even about. i've barely slept, i'm barely eating anything because eating anything makes it worse. i don't have a fever or a cough or any difficulty breathing or anything like that. i'm just at my wit's end. god keeps punishing me for the crime of him letting me exist.

[Datelessman]

The entire health insurance industry, and our full system of for-profit medicine, is BS. Medical insurance companies literally do nothing more than push money and paperwork around, and by and large, only profit when they deny care or make getting it so complicated that folks give up (yet keep paying those minimum payments). The overhead for Medicare/Medicaid is about 3%; for health insurance companies it is roughly 25% on average. Where does it go? The salaries and benefits of their CEO's, who are almost all multi-millionaires.

There is a reason why no other developed nation in the entire world has for-profit medicine the way do. It is because it does not work for anyone but the super-rich. No system is perfect and there are some gaps in "socialized medicine," but no country outside a battle zone is the #1 cause of bankruptcy medical debt. Websites like GoFundMe exist almost exclusively to allow venues for folks to beg for help to pay for medical care (or funerals). Even communist Cuba is a place where the homeless have perfect teeth and are the picture of relative physical health. Meanwhile in the U.S., even upper middle class folks have rotten teeth on par with sailors in the Middle Ages because dental care is considered optional even in comprehensive insurance packages.

And the sad reality is that it will never change in America. The U.S. will never, ever, ever, under any circumstances, have universal health care. Obama, with a filibuster proof supermajority in his first year, didn't even make a motion for it because he knew he'd never get 60 senators to vote for it (especially not with "big pharma" being major Democratic donors in states like NY, CT, and NJ). And of course the Republicans are fascist sell-outs all but drawing up blueprints for transgender concentration camps, so they're all for pro-profit care. And even the ACA/Obamacare is literally less generous than a health care bill Nixon wanted to get passed in the 1970s, but Ted Kennedy killed (ironically, in a bid to deny Nixon a domestic victory, which he later regretted in hindsight). Modern Democrats are literally to the right of Richard Nixon on health care in America (whereas modern Republicans would claim Nixon is "too woke"). That is where things stand.

It isn't just gaps in coverage, it is in hospitals seeing people as walking wallets to gouge for anything, even those who have Medicare and Medicaid. I watched both my grandmother and mother go thru such "treatment" in hospitals and nursing homes where the bottom line for the most bucks is the only thing that matters. It is disgraceful. Literal prison convicts are treated better than the elderly in these places; at least some of them have advocates or get a celebrity or podcast to care. Not a single person in America gives a damn about how many of our elderly die alone and in worse conditions than POW's in hospitals or nursing homes, picked apart or loaded with drugs because those mean maximum bills (or charges). It is disgusting.

Sorry, went on a rant. I am so sad that you are going through this nightmare, but I don't have any good solutions for you. Even "move to Canada" sounds cliche these days. I have health insurance via my job (a rare luxury) but it is so scattershot that I have been trying to self-medicate ingrown toenails for at least 6 months because I don't think a podiatrist is covered. And my biggest barrier to getting actual psychological therapy (which I probably need) is not wanting to go thru a nightmare like you're having. I still have a scar on my knee which I once sliced open very badly on a grating around 2015 which I chose to self-heal rather than go to an ER and pay 99% out of pocket. It's tragic to live in the richest country in the world where the average person either suffers or patches themselves up like zombie movie survivors rather than want to deal with the medical money machine.

I hate that you have to choose between physical and financial pain just to survive. I wish I had more than sympathy to offer.