Here’s a piece on David Fajgenbaum, a doctor who was stricken with Castleman disease during medical school at the University of Pennsylvania. He, of course, found the leading expert on ideopathic multricentric Castleman disease, Dr. Frits van Rhee in Little Rock, Arkansas. This dude is a doctor who almost died multiple times and discovered a personal cure by searching his own blood for increased signaling pathway activity and then querying a database of existing FDA-approved drugs for one that could turn it off. Just think how fucked you are if you’re one of the 5,000 people per year that gets this and can’t see one of the handful of experts that have any clue about treating it because they’re out of network. That guy in the LA Times article is dead.
It seems like I’m always an outlier on everything I go to the Dr. for (but nothing like this). IE - should I get plantar fasciitis surgery? 88% of patients recover to their previous level of physical activity. But how many of those like to hike up a mountain every weekend? Etc. It seems like I’m always in that niche.
I can relate to the idea of doing your own research and making your own diagnoses. But nothing on this scale obviously.
Seems like a pretty open and shut case to me. Congress enacted the law, the law was upheld twice at SCOTUS, Repubes didn’t like that so they’re trying once again to get the courts to strike down a law they couldn’t get repealed when they controlled Congress. So here we are.
It’s good news in the sense that the lower court’s ruling would have stood (I think) and the law would have been struck down had they not agreed to hear the case. But as demonstrably flaky as Roberts has shown himself to be, it’s anyone’s guess as to the outcome.
On one hand, it makes popular support for M4A more likely. On the other hand, my gf gets to go without health insurance for the foreseeable future. It’d be really cool if we could get to socialized healthcare without ripping away insurance from those who can’t get it through other means.
“The proper remedy is in most cases through the legislative branch. In the instant case, however, involving the provision of health care to ordinary Americans, fuck off and die.”
Justice Gorsuch. Justice Roberts concurs with the result but writes separately to express concern about something.
I’ll redact the names from one of the paragraphs and let you try to guess which is which.
As identical twins, 67-year-old Nancy and Nora Groce share the same DNA. They also share a family history of breast cancer, and both had breast cancer treatment in the last five years. One thing they don’t have in common is where they live.
More than 10 years ago, Nora moved to London, where she works as a university professor. Nancy works for the U.S. government, and splits her time between Washington D.C. and New York City.
[Sibling A] didn’t have to deal with any bills or insurance paperwork, while [Sibling B] had to negotiate with her insurance providers, pay $14,000 out of pocket along with her $3,500 annual premium just to have insurance, fight mistake bills, like one for $40,000, and deal with extreme stress throughout the whole process—on top of dealing with cancer.
FWIW I had a similar issue a few years ago that came up because we discussed a prescription I was taking while seeing my doctor for my annual physical. When I called to complain, my doctor was able to adjust it so that everything went through as a preventative visit.
When this sort of issue comes up, it’s because someone in an administrative position decided to bill you for it, not your doctor. In my experience, it unfortunately took demanding to speak to my doctor to fix it.
Had the same thing happen to me about 5 years ago when I brought up depression in my yearly physical when the doc asked “have you been having any issues”. I have no idea how anybody can say with a straight face that they like their insurance.
I thought it was only stuff that was known to be pre-existing, not stuff that was discovered/brought up for the first time in the physical. What a fucking system. It’s so depressing and demoralizing that people are like “Yep, I’d like to sign up for more of this system and not improve it because my taxes!”
For most people it’s even worse. It’s like they’re Kansas City Chiefs fans and I’ll be fucked if I’m going to support something called Elwaycare - no matter how much better it is than the current system. We’ve reached peak identity politics.
It probably is supposed to be that way. I ended up billed like 1400 bucks for the physical and blood tests that showed a slightly low vitamin d level.
I’m not exaggerating when I say that I spent probably 10 hours on the phone with BC/BS arguing about this. I’d speak to someone who said they’d resubmit it, and it would take a few weeks/months to process. I would continue getting billing letters threatening debt collection and credit reporting in the meantime. Then nothing ever changed, I’d call back and spend another 2 hours on the phone, rinse and repeat. In the end I ended up just paying it to protect my credit and my sanity.
That’s the American healthcare system working as designed. The consumer almost always gives up and pays it before the insurance company gives up and pays it. What else can you do? Sue BC/BS?
